The tenth- century manuscript of the Paschal Chronicle, Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1941, contains excerpts of another text that are labeled as being from the Great Chronographer, the Megas Chronographos. The extracts concern natural and political disasters from the fifth to eighth centuries.

Some scholars have speculated that the work of the Great Chronographer was the common source for the information in the Chronicle of Theophanes and the Short History of Patriarch Nikephoros. It was supposed that this historian worked in the eighth century during the reigns of Constantine V or Leo IV. Further research, however, has shown fairly conclusively that the Great Chronographer drew some of his material from Theophanes and Nikephoros, rather than the other way around. The work of the Megas Chronographos is now generally thought to be a compilation of the midninth century.

Manuscripts, Editions, and Translations

Manuscript

Megas Chronographos is in the tenth- century manuscript Vaticanus Graecus 1941.

Editions

Schreiner, Peter. Die Byzantinischen Kleinchroniken. Vienna : Ö sterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1975.

Cramer, John Anthony Anecdota Graeca e Codd. Manuscriptis Bibliothecae Regiae Parisiensis. Oxford : E Typographeo Academico, 1839.

Translation

Whitby, Michael and Mary Whitby, trans. Chronicon Paschale 284– 628 AD. Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 1989. Appendix II provides a discussion and translation of the excerpts from the Megas Chronographos.