The Byzantine conquest of Crete (961 AD), Prokopios' Vandal War,and the Continuator of the Chronicle of Symeon

Abstract

Historians reconstruct the Byzantine conquest of Crete in 960?961 based largely on the History of Leo the Deacon and two variants of the continuation of the Chronicle of Symeon the Logothete. However, the account in the continuation is modelled closely, in narrative structure, imagery, vocabulary and ideology, on Prokopios' account of the conquest of North Africa by Belisarios in 533?534. This challenges our knowledge of the campaign but sheds interesting new light on the sophisticated use of classical texts that Byzantine ‘chroniclers’ could make.