Justinian and the Historian Procopius Author(s): J. A. S. Evans Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Oct., 1970), pp. 218-223 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/642766 Accessed: 16/10/2008 07:53 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showpublisher?publishercode=cup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Cambridge University Press and The Classical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Greece & Rome. http://www.jstor.org
JUSTINIAN AND THE HISTORIAN PROCOPIUS By J. A. s. EVANS T HE Emperor Justinian, who succeeded his uncle Justin to the throne of Byzantium in A.D. 527, probably never intended to mark an epoch. Not, at least, the epoch which the modern historian must assign him. For his reign is in a sense a watershed; he was the last Roman emperor and the first Byzantine one. The reality of a Roman Empire embracing the whole Mediterranean had suffered a little before Justinian owing to circumstances. Among the Franks in Gaul and the Visigoths in Spain, it was more fiction than fact, but it was a fiction which was still cherished, and not merely in Constantinople. After Justinian, the concept was not dead; but it was clearly losing force.' Not that the emperor ever intended any such thing. Born in Macedonia near the Albanian border,2 he was sprung from Illyrian stock, the same race that had given Rome many great emperors in the past, including Constantine the Great himself, and Justinian was to note with some pride that his native language was Latin. He was almost the last Byzantine emperor who could say this. His own rise to power was a mixture of luck and good management. During the reign of the Emperor Leo Justin, Justinian's uncle, and two other young Illyrians, farmers who were probably reduced to poverty by a recent incursion of barbarians into Macedonia, migrated to Constantinople to join the army, walking on foot with only their cloaks and some toasted bread they had brought with them from home. They were three young men with good physiques, and the emperor enrolled them in the Excubitors, a corps of Palace Guards which he was organizing to counterbalance the excessive influence of the Germans in the imperial army. History knows nothing more of Justin's two companions, but Justin himself rose through the ranks until he became commander of Excubitors under the Emperor Anastasius.3 Anastasius died in 518, almost 90 years of age. He left three nephews, but he had made no arrangements for his successor, and his nephews were not serious candidates. One of the chief ministers gave Justin a sum of money to use as a donative to encourage support among the troops for a candidate of his choice, but Justin used it for his own purposes, and I Cf. the remarks of Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Rise of Christian Europe (London, 1965), 69-70. 2 Procopius, De Aedif. iv. I. I7-27. 3 Procopius, Anekdota 6. i-ii.
JUSTINIAN AND THE HISTORIAN PROCOPIUS 219 became the next emperor himself. He was old, illiterate, and childless, but he had already shared his good fortune in the capital with his family by bringing at least two of his nephews from his native Macedonia and seeing to their education. One of these, Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Justinian, emerged almost immediately as Justin's right-hand man, and when Justin died nine years later, he succeeded him to the throne. It was a period of great change, and high hopes which were to be disappointed. That it is so well documented we owe in large part to Procopius of Caesarea, one of the great school of Byzantine historians writing in the tradition of Thucydides and Herodotus, whom he made his models. He wrote a history of the wars of Justinian as Herodotus had written about the Persian wars a thousand years earlier, so that the great deeds of men might not be overwhelmed by oblivion. Also, he adds, now reminiscent of Thucydides, he had personal knowledge of what he was writing about, for he had been in a position to observe events because he had been part of the command structure. He had been assessor or legal secretary to the greatest general of the age, Belisarius.' The Procopius who began the history of the wars of Justinian spoke with the voice of the Establishment. Yet the writings of Procopius present an intellectual odyssey of their own. It is unlikely that he ever regarded Justinian with any real enthusiasm; the emperor was too much of an upstart, and his measures were too severe on the large landowners for the historian's taste. But in Procopius' work we can trace initial optimism changing to pessimism and guarded criticism; and finally he reaches the conclusion that Justinian was not a true king but a tyrant, not a representative of God, as emperors had been since the time of Constantine, but the king of the devils, the Antichrist.2 Then, towards the end of the historian's life, we have a last work: an account of Justinian's building programme, written as a panegyric on the emperor. Procopius clearly used sources for this panegyric which were official, and thanks to it we are better informed of Justinian's constructions than we are of those of any other emperor. But just as clearly, the work is unfinished.3 The final books are perfunctory, degenerating on occasion into long lists of unimportant buildings, and the treatise ends without even touching Italy. The churches at Ravenna, which are now valued as some of the best surviving monuments of Justinian's age, are not even mentioned. I Wars i. 3. 2 Cf. B. Rubin, Zeit. der deutsche Morgenland Gesell. xxxv (I960), 55-63. 3 G. Downey, TAPhA lxxviii (1947), I72. The excellent sources of information which Procopius had for his De Aedificiis have been emphasized lately by P. A. MacKay, AJA lxvii (1963), 241-55; presumably he had access to official records, for otherwise it would be difficult to account for the breadth of his knowledge.
220 JUSTINIAN AND THE HISTORIAN PROCOPIUS Practically all we know of Procopius comes from his own works. He was born in Caesarea in Palestine, famous once for its library and its school, but in Procopius' youth it was overshadowed by Gaza nearby. Some historians have attempted to show that he learned his classical Greek in a schoolroom at Gaza,' but the only evidence for this is Procopius' style, and this is little to go on. Since he studied law, he may have attended lectures at Beirut, where one of the great law schools of the ancient world flourished until 55I, when a terrific earthquake followed by a tidal wave and a fire overwhelmed the city. Procopius knew, or learned, Latin, for it was still necessary for legal studies, and it seems that he could read Syriac. However, he enters history in 527, when he was appointed private secretary to the young Belisarius, whom Justinian had just named commander of the imperial fortress of Daras on the eastern frontier, which was a bone of contention between the Byzantines and the Persians. The historian introduces himself with the brief sentence: 'It was then that Procopius who wrote this history was chosen as Belisarius' adviser'.2 From then on we can trace his travels for the next thirteen years or so. In 530 Belisarius, newly elevated to the post of General of the East, won the victory over the Persians which made his reputation, and Procopius' description of it is clearly an eyewitness account. But the next year there was a reverse, and in January 532 Belisarius and Procopius were back in Constantinople in time for the Nika riots, which almost toppled Justinian-which would have done so, had not the Empress Theodora kept her nerve when everyone else, including the emperor, was ready to flee for his life. But Justinian's heart was not in the east. He wanted to reconstitute the Roman Empire in the west, and the Vandal kingdom in north Africa was ripe for reconquest. Justinian concluded an 'Endless Peace' with the Persian king Chosroes in 532 (it lasted until 540) and the next year Belisarius set sail for Africa. Procopius went along. In his description of the voyage he tells us a good deal about himself. At Syracuse he did some scouting for his general and discovered that the Vandals knew nothing of the danger that threatened them.3 When the Byzantine army landed on the African coast and found fresh water, Procopius was on hand to congratulate his commander,4 and after the Byzantines had routed the Vandals at the tenth milestone from Carthage and entered the city, Procopius sat down with Belisarius and the other officers to a royal meal which had been prepared for the Vandal king, Gelimer. But when Belisarius returned 1 On Gaza at this time, see G. Downey, Gaza in the Sixth Century (Norman, Okla., 1963), 99-II6. 2 Wars i. 12. 24. 3 Wars iii. I4. 3. 4 Wars iii. 15. 35.
JUSTINIAN AND THE HISTORIAN PROCOPIUS 221 to Constantinople in triumph the next year, Procopius stayed behind with Solomon, who took over command in Africa. Thus he was on hand when the Byzantine army mutinied in 536, and he narrowly escaped to Sicily, to get help from Belisarius, who was there to start his campaign against the Ostrogoths. He remained with Belisarius for the victorious sweep which took the Byzantine forces up the leg of Italy to Rome by the winter of 536, and for the Ostrogothic counter-attack which followed under their new king, Wittigis. Belisarius returned to Constantinople in 540. Justinian received him coldly, but his services were needed desperately in Syria. Chosroes had broken the 'Endless Peace' and had swept westwards, sacking Antioch and plundering other cities. Outnumbered, Belisarius did his best, holding the Persians at bay more by bluff than military force. As for Procopius, we lose track of him. He may have accompanied Belisarius to the east, but in 542 he was back in Constantinople to witness the outbreak of bubonic plague there, which he describes in the clinical manner of Thucydides.I In Italy the Ostrogoths resumed the offensive under a new king, Totila, and in 544 Belisarius was sent back to take command, but his forces were inadequate and he could do little. Four years later he was recalled and retired. In Africa the Vandals were destroyed, but the Moors were still formidable. We do not know if Procopius returned to Italy or Africa again during this period. Perhaps he did. However, most of his spare time must have been taken up in putting together his History of the Wars, which appeared about 550, or 55.2 The History fell into three parts: two books on the Persian Wars, then two on the Vandal War and three on the Gothic War in Italy. The three wars were all brought more or less to the same stopping-point. But the order of the books cannot represent the order in which they were written. The first book of the Persian Wars must be the earliest, and it deals with events which Procopius witnessed himself. The tone is optimistic and the hero is Belisarius; anything which might detract from his hero's charisma is passed over lightly. The second book deals mostly with events which took place on the eastern frontier while Procopius was away in Africa or Italy. The tone has changed; indeed, when Procopius came to describe the sack of Antioch by Chosroes in 540, he broke out bitterly that he could not understand how it was that God-for whom everything should be done according to reason-allowed Antioch to be destroyed at the hands of a most unholy man. Antioch was a city Procopius knew, and perhaps loved, and it may be that its destruction was a turning-point in his intellectual odyssey. I Wars ii. 22. 9. 2 K. Krumbacher, Geschichte der Byzant. Litt. (Munich, I897) i. 231.
222 JUSTINIAN AND THE HISTORIAN PROCOPIUS In the Vandal War too, initial optimism fades and in the conclusion there is veiled criticism. There is also an implication, well hidden but discernible, that Belisarius, who was wholly loyal to his emperor, was the victim of Justinian's jealousy and suspicion. The optimism is largely absent in the Gothic War, but Procopius still was speaking as a member of the Establishment. The Wars were published about 550 as a single work, and it does not appear that Procopius planned a sequel. But it did have a sequel, two sequels in fact. Some time about 554 an eighth book appeared, which brought the history of Justinian's wars down to the destruction of the Ostrogothic nation in Italy by a Byzantine army under the general Narses. The tone is more critical than hitherto, but not offensively so. Procopius betrays disillusion rather than bitterness. The other sequel is the famous Secret History, which was intended as a commentary on the first seven books of the History of the Wars. It is a libellous attack on Belisarius and his wife, and particularly Justinian and Theodora, and it purports to give information which Procopius had to suppress in the History for fear of the secret police. Although mentioned in the Byzantine lexicon called the Souda, the Secret History was unknown until the early seventeenth century, when a manuscript of it was found in the Vatican Library and published. It is almost certainly genuine. But when did Procopius write it? Modern scholarship is generally agreed that it was in 550, just as he was finishing the History of the Wars. Four times in the Secret History he says that Justinian had been administering the empire for thirty-two years, and since it is clear that Procopius regarded Justinian as the real power during the reign of his uncle, we should count thirty-two years from 518, when Justin became emperor. Hence 550. The Secret History then remained unpublished in Procopius' desk until he died ten or fifteen years later.' However, the tone of the Secret History, and some internal evidence, make it more likely that it was a work of Procopius' old age, although it was still intended as a commentary on the work which made his reputation, the History of the Wars. Therefore it was written from the standpoint of an author annotating his own book as soon as it was published; it is Procopius' apology for ever having written the History of the TI'ars at all, and for having identified himself once with the policies which had brought disaster on the empire. For toward the end of his life Procopius was commissioned by the emperor to write a propaganda piece on the imperial building programme. The result was the Buildings, of which the first book must date On this, see my 'The Dates of the Anekdota and the De Aedificiis of Procopius', CP, lxiv (I969), 29-30; 'Procopius of Caesarea and the Emperor Justinian', Canadian Historical Association, Historical Papers, 1968, I26-39,
JUSTINIAN AND THE HISTORIAN PROCOPIUS 223 to about 558. Justinian's reign, for all its hopes and military glory, had been disastrous. The wars were expensive and the financial reserves built up by Anastasius had soon been exhausted. Plague had reduced the population of the empire to about sixty per cent of its former total,i and the treasury was desperate for revenue. The empire was rent with heresy, and Justinian spent increasing amounts of time on theological problems. The Buildings was probably part of an imperial propaganda effort, a work commissioned in praise of a regime which needed praise badly. Procopius must have undertaken it with secret irony, and from one cross-reference it appears that, as he was writing it, he was secretly composing his bitter commentary on the History of the Wars.2 At least we owe to the Secret History the picture of the Empress Theodora which novels and films have popularized, the prostitute become empress. It may be true. The source is not above suspicion.3 In any case, the Secret History and the Buildings present diametrically opposed pictures of the emperor. In the Buildings Justinian is the ideal king. Inspired by God, he solved problems which baffled the architects of Haghia Sophia. He is the protector of his people. In the Secret History he is a tyrant and, far from being inspired by God, he is the king of the devils, who is responsible not only for high taxes and rapacious officials, but also for the natural calamities which fell on the empire. The Justinian of the Secret History is the Justinian of the Buildings turned backwards. The Buildings is unfinished. Perhaps the emperor lost interest, and Procopius abandoned the work. But it is more probable that, soon after 560, he died, although we do know of a Procopius, possibly the historian, who held public office in 562. If so, the author of the Secret History was still, to all appearances, one of Justinian's supporters. Yet he must have had friends whose secret feelings about Justinian coincided with his own, and who were willing to act as his literary executors at some risk to themselves. For it is not likely that Procopius survived the emperor he hated, who lived on until 14 November 565.4 Cf. J. C. Russell, 'Late Ancient and Mediaeval Population', Trans. of the Am. Philosophical Soc., new ser. xlviii (1958), 37-42. 2 Anek. 18. 38 and De Aedif. ii. 7. 2-I6. On this see CP Ixiv (1969), 29-30. 3 Yet the general tendency among modern historians is to accept Procopius' account of Theodora's early life as generally accurate, but to note that even Procopius does not accuse the empress of any infidelity after her marriage to Justinian. See in general Ch. Diehl, Theodora, Imperatrice de Byzance (Paris, I904). 4 The unfinished state of the De Aedificiis should probably be accounted for by the death of its author, who therefore must have died about 560. He was probably born about 500.