History of the Wars, Books I and II | Page 2

separately by Procopius overlapped one another in time, and
that while the Romans were striving to hold back the Persian aggressor
they were also maintaining armies in Africa and in Italy. In fact the
Byzantine empire was making a supreme effort to re-establish the old
boundaries, and to reclaim the territories lost to the barbarian nations.
The emperor Justinian was fired by the ambition to make the Roman
Empire once more a world power, and he drained every resource in his
eagerness to make possible the fulfilment of this dream. It was a
splendid effort, but it was doomed to failure; the fallen edifice could
not be permanently restored.
The history is more general than the title would imply, and all the
important events of the time are touched upon. So while we read much
of the campaigns against the nations who were crowding back the
boundaries of the old empire, we also hear of civic affairs such as the
great Nika insurrection in Byzantium in 532; similarly a careful
account is given of the pestilence of 540, and the care shewn in
describing the nature of the disease shews plainly that the author must
have had some acquaintance with the medical science of the time.
After the seventh book of the History of the Wars Procopius wrote the
Anecdota, or Secret History. Here he freed himself from all the
restraints of respect or fear, and set down without scruple everything
which he had been led to suppress or gloss over in the History through
motives of policy. He attacks unmercifully the emperor and empress
and even Belisarius and his wife Antonina, and displays to us one of
the blackest pictures ever set down in writing. It is a record of wanton
crime and shameless debauchery, of intrigue and scandal both in public

and in private life. It is plain that the thing is overdone, and the very
extravagance of the calumny makes it impossible to be believed; again
and again we meet statements which, if not absolutely impossible, are
at least highly improbable. Many of the events of the History are
presented in an entirely new light; we seem to hear one speaking out of
the bitterness of his heart. It should be said, at the same time, that there
are very few contradictions in statements of fact. The author has plainly
singled out the empress Theodora as the principal victim of his
venomous darts, and he gives an account of her early years which is
both shocking and disgusting, but which, happily, we are not forced to
regard as true. It goes without saying that such a work as this could not
have been published during the lifetime of the author, and it appears
that it was not given to the world until after the death of Justinian in
565.
Serious doubts have been entertained in times past as to the authenticity
of the Anecdota, for at first sight it seems impossible that the man who
wrote in the calm tone of the History and who indulged in the fulsome
praise of the panegyric On the Buildings could have also written the
bitter libels of the Anecdota. It has come to be seen, however, that this
feeling is not supported by any unanswerable arguments, and it is now
believed to be highly probable at least, that the Anecdota is the work of
Procopius. Its bitterness may be extreme and its calumnies exaggerated
beyond all reason, but it must be regarded as prompted by a reaction
against the hollow life of the Byzantine court.
The third work is entitled On the Buildings, and is plainly an attempt to
gain favour with the emperor. We can only guess as to what the
immediate occasion was for its composition. It is plain, however, that
the publication of the History could not have aroused the enthusiasm of
Justinian; there was no attempt in it to praise the emperor, and one
might even read an unfavourable judgment between the lines. And it is
not at all unlikely that he was moved to envy by the praises bestowed
upon his general, Belisarius. At any rate the work On the Buildings is
written in the empty style of the fawning flatterer. It is divided into six
short books and contains an account of all the public buildings of
Justinian's reign in every district of the empire. The subject was well

chosen and the material ample, and Procopius lost no opportunity of
lauding his sovereign to the skies. It is an excellent example of the
florid panegyric style which was, unfortunately, in great favour with
the literary world of his own as well as later Byzantine times. But in
spite of its faults, this work is a record of the greatest importance for
the study of the period,