It all came out: the announcement to be made that the emperor was dead; the part to be played by Sergius’ two officer friends in persuading a section of the Palace Guards to back the coup; the information that Belisarius himself supported the conspiracy. All this was confirmed when the two officers in question were arrested and interrogated. (Horatius meanwhile had disappeared — provided with a bag of solidi and instructed to escape.)
Disdaining flight (suggested by his friends) as admission of complicity in the plot, Belisarius indignantly refuted before the Council the ‘evidence’ produced against him. Nevertheless, he was judged guilty and, though his life was spared in consideration of his forty years of loyal service, he was put under house arrest, and his wealth confiscated. However, no hard proof emerging that he was involved in the conspiracy, the following year Belisarius was released and restored to favour. Too late; his heart broken by grief and resentment, the great general — perhaps the greatest Roman general of all — died a few months later.
Shock and sadness over what he perceived as betrayal by his oldest friend changed to remorse and bitter self-recrimination on Justinian’s part as he came at last to see that Belisarius was no traitor, but the innocent victim of malicious rumour.
Revenge, as a Greek philosopher once said, was indeed a dish best eaten cold, reflected Procopius as, lauded and heaped with honours by a grateful emperor, he basked in his new-found reputation as the saviour of the monarchy.
* Civic dignitaries. The plot was investigated in 560, but the case fizzled out for lack of evidence. None of the mud stuck to Peter himself, for we find him in post as Master of Offices throughout that year, and in 562 negotiating a Fifty Year Peace with Persia.
* Horace, Odes. ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.’
THIRTY-TWO
Nothing is lost; destruction is only a name for a change of substance
The funeral, as befitted one of the best prefects Constantinople had known, was a grand and solemn service. A moving eulogy, delivered by Paul the Silentiary,* paid tribute to a distinguished public servant who had graced the world of scholarship and letters with his great History of the Wars of Justinian, having himself taken part in many of the campaigns he wrote about so eloquently. Above all, the Roman world owed an incalculable debt to one who, only a few short months before, had, by his expertise and boldness, foiled a monstrous plot to assassinate the emperor. All Constantinople had, it seemed, turned out to pay its last respects to the great Praefectus, as the cortege proceeded from the Praetorium to the Church of Saint Irene, where the body of Procopius was laid to rest.
Returning to the Palace, Justinian retreated to the garden where he and Theodora had first met and which, increasingly, had become a place of refuge where he could be by himself with his deepest thoughts. At last, he was quite alone, the emperor reflected sadly. In turn there had been taken from him: first Theodora, both cornerstone and central pillar of his life; then Belisarius, the friend and faithful servant he had wronged; and now, Procopius — whom, in some ways, he had loved like the son he had never known. Were all things transitory, he wondered, with loss and change the only certainties? All his life he had striven to establish good things that would endure: a Roman Empire that would last forever, serving to implement God’s Plan for the light of civilization and True Faith to shine in time throughout the world; laws that would guide men’s conduct down the ages; great buildings of a design and structure to defy the ravages of time. .
But perhaps it had all been for nothing. Everywhere, blind, uncaring forces seemed to be threatening all he had achieved. Ferocious Lombards were already casting greedy eyes on Italy, ravaged and weakened by twenty years of war; Slavs, Bulgars, and now this new threat from the East, a race more terrible even than the Huns — the Avars — menaced the Danube frontier. His attempts to forge religious unity between East and West — Monophysite and Chalcedonian — had foundered on the rocks of ignorance and stubborn wilfulness. When he passed away (and, at eighty-one, that time could not be distant, Justinian reminded himself), would all that he had worked for fade and vanish also, as ripples from a pebble cast into a pool were briefly seen then disappeared? Was his new-found interest in Aphthartodocetism — the doctrine that held Christ’s body to be incorruptible — merely a reflection of a longing for assurance that some things did not change, were immutable and permanent? Insidiously, a terrifying thought slid into the emperor’s brain. What if the very faith he had striven all his life to understand and serve were nothing more than empty superstition?
In the midst of these gloomy cogitations, Justinian was interrupted by a servitor bearing a book — not an old-fashioned set of papyrus rolls or volumina, but one of the newer kind with parchment paginae.
‘In his Will, Serenity, the prefect stated that he wished you to have the first copy of his final work.’ Bowing, the man handed the codex to Justinian, then departed. Inscribed in gold on the beautiful calf-leather binding was the title — Secret History. Welcoming this distraction from his mood of sombre introspection, the emperor opened the book and eagerly began to read. .
‘Justinian’s family was illiterate, boorish, descended from slaves and barbarians. . he [Justinian] was the son of a demon. . Justinian’s senseless wars and persecutions. . during his reign the whole earth was drenched with human blood. . without hesitation he shattered the laws when money was in sight. . was like a cloud of dust in instability. . never paused for a thorough investigation before reaching a decision. . was never able to adhere to settled conditions, but was naturally inclined to make confusion and turmoil everywhere. . while Justinian ruled no law remained fixed, no transaction safe, no contract valid. . an evil-doer and easily led into evil. . she [Theodora] could win over her husband quite against his will to any action she desired. . she would lie with all her fellow diners the whole night long; when she had reduced them all to a state of exhaustion she would go to their menials, as many as thirty on occasions, and copulate with every one of them, but not even so could she satisfy her lust. .’
With a cry of horrified disgust, Justinian dropped the book, unable to read on, each poisoned phrase seeming like a dagger-thrust to the heart. From what deep well of resentment had issued this astonishing outpouring of hate and malice? Shaken to the core of his being, Justinian felt, not anger — only sorrow, hurt, and incomprehension that a man he had always regarded as a friend, should see him (and Theodora) in such a baleful light. A black depression settled on the emperor, from which, for many days he was unable to be roused.
‘Serenity — Tan-Shing, the Chinese sage I told you of is here,’ announced Paul the Silentiary, standing at the entrance of Justinian’s tablinum. ‘Shall I admit him?’
‘Let us receive him by all means, Paul,’ replied the emperor with a wan smile, ‘though I doubt that anything he has to say can lift my spirits.’