Marcellinus Comes
so called on account of the office of comes, which he held probably at Constantinople, was a native of Illyricum.
Works
IV. Libri de Temporum Qualitatibus et Positionibus Locorum
Marcellinus Comes is said to have written IV. Libri de Temporum Qualitatibus et Positionibus Locorum, which is much praised by Cassiodorus (De Institutione Divinarum Liber., 100.7), but which is lost.
Chronicon
He wrote besides a short Chronicon, which begins with the consulship of Ausonius and Olybrius, or the accession of Theodosius the Great, in A. D. 379, and goes down to the accession of Justin I., in 518.
Editions
This is the original work of Marcellinus as published in the editio princeps by Sconhovius. Another writer continued the work till the fourth consulate of Justinian the Great, in 534. The latter part is contained in the edition of Jo. Sirmond, Paris, 1619, 8vo.
Assessment
The compilation of Marcellinus, who lived probably at the end of the fifth and in the beginning of the sixth century of our era, is not without some value, and is often quoted by modern historians.
Further Information
Fabric. Bibl. Lat. vol. ii. p. 616.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.