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.

Preface by Procopius

In what I have written on the Roman wars up to the present point, the story
was arranged in chronological order and as completely as the times then permitted.
What I shall write now follows a different plan, supplementing the previous
formal chronicle with a disclosure of what really happened throughout the Roman
Empire. You see, it was not possible, during the life of certain persons, to
write the truth of what they did, as a historian should. If I had, their hordes
of spies would have found out about it, and they would have put me to a most
horrible death. I could not even trust my nearest relatives. That is why I was
compelled to hide the real explanation of many matters glossed over in my previous
books.

These secrets it is now my duty to tell and reveal the remaining hidden matters
and motives. Yet when I approach this different task, I find it hard indeed
to have to stammer and retract what I have written before about the lives of
Justinian and Theodora. Worse yet, it occurs to me that what I am now about
to tell will seem neither probable nor plausible to future generations, especially
as time flows on and my story becomes ancient history. I fear they may think
me a writer of fiction, and even put me among the poets.

However, I have this much to cheer me, that my account will not be unendorsed
by other testimony: so I shall not shrink from the duty of completing this work.
For the men of today, who know best the truth of these matters, will be trustworthy
witnesses to posterity of the accuracy of my evidence.

Still another thing for a long time deferred my passion to relieve myself
of this untold tale. For I wondered if it might be prejudicial to future generations,
and the wickedness of these deeds had not best remain unknown to later times:
lest future tyrants, hearing, might emulate them. It is deplorably natural that
most monarchs mimic the sins of their predecessors and are most readily disposed
to turn to the evils of the past.

But, finally, I was again constrained to proceed with this history, for the
reason that future tyrants may see also that those who thus err cannot avoid
retribution in the end, since the persons of whom I write suffered that judgment.
Furthermore, the disclosure of these actions and tempers will be published for
all time, and in consequence others will perhaps feel less urge to transgress.

For who now would know of the unchastened life of Semiramis or the madness
of Sardanapalus or Nero, if the record had not thus been written by men of their
own times? Besides, even those who suffer similarly ‘-from later tyrants will
not find this narrative quite unprofitable. For the miserable find comfort in
the philosophy that not on them alone has evil fallen.

Accordingly, I begin the tale. First I shall reveal the folly of Belisarius,
and then the depravity of Justinian and Theodora.