Secret History

Now for a writer who brings to mind the polemics of Baron de Vastey on Petion. Procopius's Secret History is an entertaining list of the various flaws, shortcomings, gossip, and demonic traits of Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora. Of course, General Belisarius and his wife Antonina come into the narrative for the first section, with Belisarius coming off as one of the biggest dupes of the Byzantine Empire for allowing his wife to cheat on him with various men. Justinian and Theodora, however, were even worse. According the invectives of Procopius, Justinian may or may not have really been a demon and his wife was an infamous whore. Together, they were hell-bent on destroying the Roman Empire and ruining their subjects, overthrowing the rule of law, and corrupting every institution. Of course, the reality of the Byzantine Empire during the Age of Justinian was likely quite different, yet the various issues of constant wars, imperial overexpansion, the plague, factional conflict between the Greens and Blues and conflicts over religious doctrine support some of Procopius's concerns with the direction of the Empire. While one must be careful with taking the character portraits of Procopius too literally, one gains insights into the nature of the Byzantine Empire during the crucial 6th century.