A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

or MALALAS, IOANNES (Ἰωάννης ὁ Μαλέλα or Μαλάλα), a native of Antioch, and a Byzantine historian. According to Hody he lived in the ninth century; but it is more probable that he lived shortly after Justinian the Great, as Gibbon very positively asserts (Decline and Fall, vol. vii. p. 61, not. 1, ed. 1815, 8vo.). Those, however, who pretend that he could not have lived after Mohammed, simply because his name in Syriac, (" Malalas,") means " an orator," the Syrian language being soon superseded by the Arabic, are much mistaken, for the outrooting of the Syriac was no more the work of a century than of a day. It is unknown who Malelas was.

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