The Ruin of the Roman Empire by James J. O'Donnell

Author:James J. O'Donnell [O'Donnell, James J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9780060787370
Goodreads: 4458818
Publisher: Ecco
Published: 2008-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

Being Justinian s 225

Justinian as general: a spin doctor’s fantasy.

venient Mediterranean port for caravans from southern Arabia, and pro-

vided a no less distinctive advantage for the scholars who lived and wrote

there. Procopius came from Caesarea in the early years of Justinian’s reign

to make his way in Constantinople.

When Procopius came to write the history of Justinian, he knew ex-

actly the story he wanted to tell. He had a good emperor, a good general,

and wars that gave every promise of great success. But the good emperor

was not Justinian—it was Khusro I, the Persian—and Justinian’s wars of

great promise all turned out ill in the end. The good general was Justin-

ian’s loyal Belisarius, on whose staff Procopius had served during Afri-

can and Italian campaigns. Since Procopius was self-interested enough to

226 s the ruin of the roman empire

tell his story as though it were in praise of Justinian, most ancient and

modern readers have taken for granted that he was a serviceable court

historian, doing the best he could with difficult material. If Justinian is

Procopius’s central figure, however, he comes through these pages silent

and sullen, and at one point is even accused of behaving like a barbarian.27

Whether Procopius revives the spirit of Thucydides or anticipates that of

Leo Strauss (both notions have their supporters among scholars today), he

is a slippery and ambiguous figure to be the source of so much precious

and privileged information.

Procopius of Caesarea wrote the history of Justinian’s wars in eight

books, and in so doing he accomplished exactly what Justinian wanted,

making the regime of the soldier’s nephew into a thrilling tale of reconquest

and imperial glory: Persians, Vandals, and Goths all fall at the feet of the

mighty Roman. But Justinian did not see through the ironies and complexi-

ties of Procopius’s text, and many readers since have missed them as well.

Though Procopius leaves the serious reader with no doubt that his Justin-

ian was anything but a great emperor and hero, his real disdain simmers

unmistakably half an inch below the surface, and in his public histories he

succeeded in capturing the ambiguous spirit of his age. He could still write

an appendix to his histories of the wars, an entire volume devoted to Jus-

tinian’s buildings, outwardly glorifying the shells of empire that Justinian

constructed but leaving the readers to form their own judgment

Procopius then wrote another book, one not published in his lifetime,

and one that cannot be ignored in any discussion of the sixth century or

of Justinian. The Anecdota (literally, “unpublished material,” usually ren-

dered in English as The Secret History) was first published and read, as

near as we can tell, in the seventeenth century. It is the scandal sheet of its

times, and no modern writer can resist it. Procopius told his explicit mi-

sogynistic stories to shock, but their historical value, at the very most, is to

say that well-bred Constantinopolitans were appalled that their emperor

had not chosen to perfume himself with an ambitious marriage to a society

girl. Instead he reached below his social station for a partner of whom the

worst had to be said, whatever the truth might be. If you insist on

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