History

An excerpt containing mixed information on Christian chronology and classical mythology is preserved under the name of Diocles in the manuscript London, British Library, Additional 12152. De Lagarde (1866: 143), followed by Wright (1871: 498), identified the author with the third-century B.C. Greek historian Diocles of Peparethus. As remarked by Guidi (107: 285), this identification is proved wrong by the very contents of the fragment.

A version of the same fragment is anonymoulsy preserved in a fourteenth-century manuscript of Kirkuk (Iraq), of which Theodore Nöldeke possessed a modern copy used by Guidi in his edition.

The fragment contains a section on Heracles' discovery of the purple which has a parallel in the Chronicle of John Malalas. Similarities and differences between the two have been analysed by Debié (2004: 150-152), who suggests that Malalas and the anonymous Syriac author might share the same source.