The fullest source for the early part of Justinian’s reign is that provided by the historian Procopius from (Palestinian) Caesarea, a cosmopolitan city, with Jewish and Christian communities and celebrated as a centre of education that was still, as excavations on the waterfront have shown, bustling with trade in the sixth century. Procopius was born into the Christian upper classes but nothing is known of his life until he surfaces in 527 on the staff of Justinian’s most gifted general, Belisarius. It was the career of Belisarius that gave him his opportunity to see, at first hand, fighting in the east, the great expedition to Africa, and the longer campaign in Italy (536-40). By 542, at the latest, Procopius was in Constantinople and spent much of the rest of his life there. He may have returned to Italy in 546-7 but he had fallen out of the emperor’s favour and does not seem to have held any other official post. There is no work of his that can be proved to be written after 554.
Procopius left three main works. The most substantial is his account of Justinian’s wars in the east, Africa, and Italy. The Wars is primarily a narrative with a mass of detail on the armies, battles, and personalities involved, much of it gathered at first hand. Procopius’ model is Thucydides. He even provides a detailed account of the devastating plague in Constantinople which is reminiscent of that described by Thucydides in Athens. As with Thucydides, Procopius’ strength lies in the vivid depiction of great events and at first his story has all the excitement it needs, as Procopius’ hero, Belisarius, destroys the Vandals and returns home to Constantinople to celebrate his victory. In the later volumes, however, with a Persian sack of Antioch, the outbreak of plague (see below), and stalemate in Italy, Procopius’ optimism fades and his disillusionment with imperial policy grows stronger. He, like so many of his class, was naturally suspicious of the ambitions and autocracy of an emperor (at one point he compares Justinian to Domitian) and his resentments were piled up to be eventually vented in his Secret History, composed perhaps around 550 (before he had finished The Wars). This, the best known of Procopius’ works, is a vitriolic tirade against Justinian (and to some extent Belisarius) though it is most often read for its descriptions of the alleged sexual cavortings of the empress Theodora in her early life as a circus artiste. The Secret History was never intended to be published during Justinian’s lifetime and contrasts with the third of Procopius’ surviving works on Justinian’s building programme (Buildings). This is a straightforward panegyric, probably also written in the early 550s, in which the achievements of the emperor as patron of such majestic buildings as St Sophia and other churches (but also of a vast range of fortifications) are praised.
Procopius was writing consciously within classical Greek literary traditions. Both the invective and the panegyric were recognized forms to which a writer could turn when it suited his purpose. Averil Cameron has deconstructed Procopius’ works to show that they have an underlying unity within this tradition. Procopius was writing for an elitist minority who understood the conventions and who would not have been as disturbed by the disparity between the three surviving works as later generations have been. The tradition was a constraining one, however. It focused on secular history in a period when religious debate was endemic and spiritual power a major element of Justinian’s hold over his people. Procopius makes only marginal references to religion. (See Averil Cameron, Procopius and the Sixth Century, London, 1985.)
A weakness of Procopius’ writings lies in the narrowness of his perspective. In his description of the Nika riots he cannot see the rioters as anything more than a rabble—the expected response of his class, perhaps, but not an adequate analysis of an event that incorporated some form of coherent political programme. Procopius’ suspicions of Justinian were understandable but became so exaggerated that it is impossible to understand the motives of the emperor for putting in hand his great campaigns. This is part of a more general weakness, Procopius’ failure to deal with causation in history. Years of triumph could be presented as part of God’s divine favour for the empire or as the result of the qualities of the empire’s leaders; years of catastrophe, such as 540 on the Persian border when Antioch was razed to the ground, left the historian overwhelmed and reduced to making banal statements about Fate. Nevertheless Procopius remains a major historian. It can even be said that he is too successful a source, providing a picture of the reign that has been too easily absorbed by those who have read him. Despite the continuation of his history by one or two followers, he represented the last of the classical tradition. After Procopius history was written solely from a Christian perspective with the Bible providing the major source for the past and God’s presence hovering over the unfolding of events.
World History
