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.

11.. HOW THE DEFENDER OF THE FAITH RUINED HIS SUBJECTS

As soon as Justinian came into power he turned everything upside down. Whatever
had been before by law, he now introduced into the government, while he revoked
all established customs: as if he had been given the robes of an Emperor on the
condition he would turn everything topsy-turvy. Existing offices he abolished, and
invented new ones for the management of public affairs. He did the same thing to
the laws and to the regulations of the army; and his reason was not any improvement
of justice or any advantage, but simply that everything might be new and named after
himself. And whatever was beyond his power to abolish, he renamed after himself
anyway.

Of the plundering of property or the murder of men, no weariness ever overtook
him. As soon as he had looted all the houses of the wealthy, he looked around for
others; meanwhile throwing away the spoils of his previous robberies in subsidies
to barbarians or senseless building extravagances. And when he had ruined perhaps
myriads in this mad looting, he immediately sat down to plan how he could do likewise
to others in even greater number.

As the Romans were now at peace with all the world and he had no other means
of satisfying his lust for slaughter, he set the barbarians all to fighting each
other. And for no reason at all he sent for the Hun chieftains, and with idiotic
magnanimity gave them large sums of money, alleging he did this to secure their
friendship. This, as I have said, he had also done in Justin’s time. These Huns,
as soon as they had got this money, sent it together with their soldiers to others
of their chieftains, with the word to make inroads into the land of the Emperor:
so that they might collect further tribute from him, to buy them off in a second
peace. Thus the Huns enslaved the Roman Empire, and were paid by the Emperor to
keep on doing it.

This encouraged still others of them to rob the poor Romans; and after their
pillaging, they too were further rewarded by the gracious Emperor. In this way all
the Huns, for when it was not one tribe of them it was another, continuously overran
and laid waste the Empire. For the barbarians were led by many different chieftains,
and the war, thanks to Justinian’s senseless generosity, was thus endlessly protracted.
Consequently no place, mountain or cave, or any other spot in Roman territory, during
this time remained uninjured; and many regions were pillaged more than five times.

These misfortunes, and those that were caused by the Medes, Saracens, Slavs,
Antes, and the rest of the barbarians, I described in my previous works. But, as
I said in the preface to this narrative, the real cause of these calamities remained
to be told here.

To Chosroes also -he paid many centenaries in behalf of peace, and then with
unreasonable arbitrariness caused the breaking of the truce by making every effort
to secure the friendship of Alamandur and his Huns, who had been in alliance with
the Persians: but this I freely discussed in my chapters on the subject.

Moreover, while he was encouraging civil strife and frontier warfare to confound
the Romans, with only one thought in his mind, that the earth should run red with
human blood and he might acquire more and more booty, he invented a new means of
murdering his subjects. Now among the Christians in the entire Roman Empire, there
are many with dissenting doctrines, which are called heresies by the established
church: such as those of the Montanists and Sabbatians, and whatever others cause
the minds of men to wander from the true path. All of these beliefs he ordered to
be abolished, and their place taken by the orthodox dogma: threatening, among the
punishments for disobedience, loss of the heretic’s right to will property to his
children or other relatives.

Now the churches of these so-called heretics especially those belonging to the
Arian dissenters, were almost incredibly wealthy. Neither all the Senate put together
nor the greatest other unit of the Roman Empire, had anything in property comparable
to that of these churches. For their gold and silver treasures, and stores of precious
stones, were beyond telling or numbering: they owned mansions and whole villages,
land all over the world, and everything else that is counted as wealth among men.

As none of the previous Emperors had molested these churches, many men, even
those of the orthodox faith, got their livelihood by working on their estates. But
the Emperor Justinian, in confiscating these properties, at the same time took away
what for many people had been their only means of earning a living.

Agents were sent everywhere to force whomever they chanced upon to renounce the
faith of their fathers. This, which seemed impious to rustic people, caused them
to rebel against those who gave them such an order. Thus many perished at the hands
of the persecuting faction, and others did away with themselves, foolishly thinking
this the holier course of two evils; but most of them by far quitted the land of
their fathers, and fled the country. The Montanists, who dwelt in Phrygia, shut
themselves up in their churches, set them on fire, and ascended to glory in the
flames. And thenceforth the whole Roman Empire was a scene of massacre and flight.

A similar law w as then passed against the Samaritans, which threw Palestine
into an indescribable turmoil.

Those, indeed, who lived in my own Caesarea and in the other cities, deciding
it silly to suffer harsh treatment over a ridiculous trifle of dogma, took the name
of Christians in exchange for the one they had borne before, by which precaution
they were able to avoid the perils of the new law. The most reputable and better
class of these citizens, once they had adopted this religion, decided to remain
faithful to it; the majority, however, as if in spite for having not voluntarily,
but by the compulsion of law, abandoned the belief of their fathers, soon slipped
away into the Manichean sect and what is known as polytheism.

The country people, however, banded together and determined to take arms against
the Emperor: choosing as their candidate for the throne a bandit named Julian, son
of Sabarus. And for a time they held their own against the imperial troops; but
finally, defeated in battle, were cut down, together with their leader. Ten myriads
of men are said to have perished in this engagement, and the most fertile country
on earth thus became destitute of farmers. To the Christian owners of these lands,
the affair brought great hardship: for while their profits from these properties
were annihilated, they had to pay heavy annual taxes on them to the Emperor for
the rest of their lives, and secured no remission of this burden.

Next he turned his attention to those called Gentiles, torturing their persons
and plundering their lands. of this group, those who decided to become nominal Christians
saved themselves for the time being; but it was not long before these, too, were
caught performing libations and sacrifices and other unholy rites. And how he treated
the Christians shall be told hereafter.

After this he passed a law prohibiting pederasty: a law pointed not at offenses
committed after this decree, but at those who could be convicted of having practised
the vice in the past. The conduct of the prosecution was utterly illegal. Sentence
was passed when there was no accuser: the word of one man or boy, and that perhaps
a slave, compelled against his will to bear witness against his owner, was defined
as sufficient evidence. Those who were convicted were castrated and then exhibited
in a public parade. At the start, this persecution was directed only at those who
were of the Green party, were reputed to be especially wealthy, or had otherwise
aroused jealousy.

The Emperor’s malice was also directed against the astrologer. Accordingly, magistrates
appointed to punish thieves also abused the astrologers, for no other reason than
that they belonged to this profession; whipping them on the back and parading them
on camels

throughout the city, though they were old men, and in every way respectable,
with no reproach against them except that they studied the science of the stars
while living in such a city.

Consequently there was a constant stream of emigration not only to the land of
the barbarians but to places farthest remote from the Romans; and in every country
and city one could see crowds of foreigners. For in order to escape persecution,
each would lightly exchange his native land for another, as if his own country had
been taken by an enemy.