John of Nikiu and Prokopios of Caesarea on the Wars of Justinian I against the Persians at the South Caucasus: Narrative Structures and Trends of History Writing

Abstract

The present article deals with the peculiarities of narrative tools of two historians related to different language and religion traditions: John of Nikiu, Monophysite Coptic bishop from the city of Nikiu at the Nile Delta (second half of the seventh century), and a prominent Byzantine historian from the Age of Justinian I (527–565), Prokopios of Caesarea. The article’s author compares two historians accounts on the same subject, Justinian’s military campaign of 527–528 in Lazika, the small kingdom on the west of modern Georgia. This comparison allows the one to uncover the special features of the methods used by each Byzantine historian. The main aspects discussed in the article are: how John of Nikiu and Prokopios of Caesarea narrated the war in Lazika; in which consequence they arranged topics and events; and which ideological trend they followed. The main conclusion is that the work of John of Nikiu (The Chronicle) belonged to the genre of church history, and, from the content-perspective point of view, it reflected the values of Christian thinking. Moreover, John of Nikiu got a good knowledge of Prokopios’ works, but he used them selectively, by giving preference to Church history writings. This is well visible on the example of the Lazika war, where John almost totally followed the version narrated not by Prokopios, but by another Christian chronicler, John Malalas, who also lived in the Age of Justinian.

Keywords

• иоанн никиуский
• прокопий кесарийский
• лазика
• юстиниан i
• персы
• христианская историография
• риторический стиль
• техника повествования