Fragments on Persian History by John of Epiphania

The Fragments on Persian History by the Byzantine historian John of Epiphania is a lost historical work, preserved only in six excerpts within the 10th-century encyclopedia, the Suda. The original prose history covered late 6th-century Byzantine-Persian relations, with a significant fragment detailing the negotiations and peace treaty of 591 CE between Emperor Maurice and the restored Persian King Khosrow II.

The surviving fragments indicate the work focused on:

The text survives exclusively through its six cited fragments in the Suda; no independent manuscript tradition exists. The historian Theophylact Simocatta later used John’s work as a source for his own 7th-century history.

John of Epiphania provides a crucial contemporary account of Emperor Maurice’s reign and a key Byzantine-Persian treaty. Though fragmentary, his work supplied important material for later historiography and remains a primary source for modern reconstructions of late 6th-century diplomacy.