The Annals of Niketas Choniates

Written 2010 by Will Johnson Email me at wjhonson@aol.com or post your comments for public view far below. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

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Niketas Choniates (d. 1215/6) was a chronicler who wrote a History or Annals of Byzantium, in Greek, covering the period 1118 to 1207. ("Niketas Choniates", Wikipedia)  He is a primary source for events surrounding the Fourth Crusade.  The original Greek with a Latin translation at this link on Google Books. This edition states "by Immanuel Bekker" (published 1835), I think he might simply be the editor of the older Hieronymus Wolf version.   Other than some excerpts and citations in other works, I cannot find an English translation, free-of-charge.  There is a published version in English, available used, on Amazon at this link.  I provide below a table of contents for this 1835 Bekker edition cited above, which has 974 pages, including the notes, chronology, glossary, and two indexes at the end, but not including the 20 page preface.  On page XIX, we find this: "Nicetae Choniatae, Logothetae Secretorum, Inspectoris et Judicus Beli, Praefecti Cubiculi, Historia, Quae Ab Imperio Johannis Comneni, Alexii Filit, Incipit".  There are notes at the end by Wolf, but there are also embedded footnotes, which then I suppose must be by Bekker.

Aside: Should anyone want to try their hand at learning Latin, there is a Latin-to-English online translator at this link.  Latin however is a rather difficult language for a machine to translate evidently, and that translator tries to give a literal word-for-word translation without knowledge of structure.  A better translator CTCWeb, is available at this link, but you have to wade through a lot of jargon to figure it out.  For example, using CTCWeb, I can parse out that "De Rebus Post Captam Urbem Gestis" must mean something like "Things that occurred after the capture of the city".  Or... something.

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Anyway, back to Niketas.  After the introductory section, there next follows several subheadings, which is a table of contents to the rest of the work, which is broken down by who the ruler was and then further into "books" (Liber) and numbered sub-sections:

 

Fabroti Breviarium ("Praefatio laudes historiae et Nicetae in hac contexenda consilium proponens.")

De Iohanne Comneno	De Manuele Comneno	De Alexio Comneno Manuelis F
De Andronico Comneno	De Isaacio Angelo	De Alexio Comneno Isaacii Angeli Fratre
De Isaacio Angelo Iterum Imperatore	De Alexio Duca Murzuflo	De Rebus Post Captam Urbem Gestis

 
Just for reference purposes on this Knol page, I include the years that each person above was Emperor of Byzantium in the table below, with a link to their Wikipedia entry in parenthesis.  Note that Isaac Angelos' son Alexios IV is skipped, in this source, although modern commentators state that he was co-emperor and possibly wielded the actual power:

Years they reigned, not years they lived
Iohanne Comneno (John II Komnenos) 1118-43	Manuele Comneno (Manuel I Komnenos) 1143-80
Alexio Comneno (Alexios II Komnenos) 1180-83	Andronico Comneno (Andronikos I Komnenos) 1183-85
Isaacio Angelo (Isaac II Angelos) 1185-95	Alexio Comneno (Alexios III Angelos) 1195-1203
Isaacio Angelo (restored 1203-4)	Alexio Duca Murzuflo (Alexios V Doukas) 1204

(See Also: Table of Popes and Emperors, 1100-1300)

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Then the main work, which has embedded titles, and also book and section numbers without sub-titles.  I have below used the same titles and section numbers, but added the first words of that section as it's sub-title, just for my own ease-of-use.

Notes by Hieronymus Wolf (page 871)

Chronology (page 893)

Glossary (page 902)

Index Verborum (page 929)

Index Historicus (page 943)