Historiography

here were two kinds of historical works in Byzantium: histories, and popular historical narratives, which were "lighter" than the histories. The latter recounted various events in world history begining from Adam and up to the time of the writer. They were written in a simple language, were intended to entertain the reader and constituted part of Byzantine "popular literature". Histories, on the other hand, were written in order to provide systematic historical information on a certain period of time, in accordance with the prototypes and style of classical historical works.