The Secret History

by

Procopius of Caesarea

translated by Richard Atwater

(Chicago: P. Covici, 1927 New York Covici Friede 1927)

Reprinted, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1961, with indication
that copyright had expired on the text of the translation.

6. IGNORANCE OF THE EMPEROR JUSTIN, AND HOW HIS NEPHEW JUSTINIAN WAS THE VIRTUAL
RULER

I now come to the tale of what sort of beings Justinian and Theodora were, and
how they brought confusion on the Roman State.

During the rule of the Emperor Leo in Constantinople, three young farmers of
Illyrian birth, named Zimarchus, Ditybistus, and Justin of Bederiana, after a desperate
struggle with poverty, left their homes to try their fortune in the army. They made
their way to Constantinople on foot, carrying on their shoulders their blankets
in which were wrapped no other equipment except the biscuits they had baked at home.
When the arrived and were admitted into military service, the Emperor chose them
for the palace guard; for they were all three fine-looking men.

Later, when Anastasius succeeded to the throne, war broke out with the Isaurians
when that nation rebelled; and against them Anastasius sent a considerable army
under John the Hunchback. This John for some offense threw Justin into the guardhouse,
and on the following day would have sentenced him to death, had he not been stopped
by a vision appearing to him in a dream. For in this dream, the general said, he
beheld a being, gigantic in size and in every way mightier than mortals: and this
being commanded him to release the man whom he had arrested that day. Waking from
his sleep, John said, he decided the dream was not worth considering. But the next
night the vision returned, and again he heard the same words he had heard before;
yet even so he was not persuaded to obey its command. But for the third time the
vision appeared in his dreams, and threatened him with fearful consequences if he
did not do as the angel ordered: warning that he would be in sore need of this man
and his family thereafter, when the day of wrath should overtake him. And this time
Justin was released.

As time went on, this Justin came to great power. For the Emperor Anastasius
appointed him Count of the palace guard; and when the Emperor departed from this
world, by the force of his military power Justin seized the throne. By this time
he was an old man on the verge of the grave, and so illiterate that he could neither
read nor write: which never before could have been said of a Roman ruler. It was
the custom for an Emperor to sign his edicts with his own hand, but he neither made
decrees nor was able to understand the business of state at all.

The man on whom it befell to assist him as Quaestor was named Proclus; and he
managed everything to suit himself. But so that he might have some evidence of the
Emperor’s hand, he invented the following device for his clerks to construct. Cutting
out of a block of wood the shapes of the four letters required to make the Latin
word, they dipped a pen into the ink used by emperors for their signatures, and
put it in the Emperor’s fingers. Laying the block of wood I have described on the
paper to be signed, they guided the Emperor’s hand so that his pen outlined the
four letters, following all the curves of the stencil: and thus they withdrew with
the FIAT Of the Emperor. This is how the Romans were ruled under Justin.

His wife was named Lupicina: a slave and a barbarian, she was bought to be his
concubine. With Justin, as the sun of his life was about to set, she ascended the
throne.

Now Justin was able to do his subjects neither harm nor good. For he was simple,
unable to carry on a conversation or make a speech, and utterly bucolic. His nephew
Justinian, while still a youth, was the virtual ruler-, and the of more and worse
calamities to the Romans than any one man in all their previous history that has
come down to us.- For he had no scruples; against murder or the seizing of other
persons property; and it was nothing to him to make away with myriads of men, even
when they gave him no cause. He had no care for preserving established customs,
but was always eager for new experiments, and, in short, was the greatest corrupter
of all noble traditions.

Though the plague, described in my former books, attacked the whole world, no
fewer men escaped than perished of it; for some never were taken by the disease,
and others recovered after it had smitten them. But this man, not one of all the
Romans could escape; but as if he were a second pestilence sent from heaven, he
fell on the nation and left no man quite untouched. For some he slew without reason,
and some he released to struggle with penury, and their fate was worse than that
of those who had perished, so that they prayed for death to free them from their
misery; and others he robbed of their property and their lives together.

When there was nothing left to ruin in the Roman state, he determined the conquest
of Libya and Italy, for no other reason than to destroy the people there, as he
had those who were already his subjects.

Indeed, his power was not ten days old, before he slew Amantius, chief of the
palace eunuchs, and several others, on no graver charge than that Amantius had made
some rash remark about John, Archbishop of the city. After this, he was the most
feared of men.

Immediately after this he sent for the rebel Vitalian, to whom he had first given
pledges of safety, and partaken with him of the Christian communion. But soon after
he became suspicious and jealous, and murdered Vitalian and his companions at a
banquet in the palace: thus showing he considered himself in no way bound by the
most sacred of pledges.