In a telling metaphor in his perceptive and thought-provoking The World of Late Antiquity, Peter Brown imagines a traveller by train realizing ‘at the end of a long slow journey that the landscape outside has altered — so in the crucial generations between the reign of Justinian and that of Heraclius, we can sense the definitive emergence of a medieval world’. The world into which Justinian was born was still a fully Roman one. By the year of his death, 565, the signs that Antiquity was ending (e.g. a preoccupation with religious issues at the expense of rational philosophy, of which the closing of the Schools of Athens is a marker) were beginning to appear. It is perhaps not without significance that, almost coincidentally with Justinian’s passing, was born (c. 570) the man whose legacy would bring about the passing also of Justinian’s world — Mahomet.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
By far the most valuable source of information for Justinian and his times is The Wars of Justinian by Procopius of Caesarea — a lawyer who became official war correspondent for Justinian’s great general, Belisarius. Procopius accompanied the latter on his African campaign against the Vandals, and for much of the long Gothic War in Italy, many of the incidents he describes being written from first-hand experience. Admirably detailed and objective, it is very much in the classical vein of Greek and Roman historians such as Thucydides, Polybius, Tacitus and Ammianus. In glaring contrast to The Wars (which on the whole paints a favourable picture of Justinian) is Procopius’ Secret History — a savage attack on the emperor and his wife Theodora, portraying them in the most scurrilous of terms. Too biased to be helpful in describing the imperial pair, in other respects it is a useful supplement to The Wars. Some other useful contemporary sources are the ecclesiastical histories of Evagrius and John of Ephesus, and the chronicles of John Malalas, John of Antioch, and Count Marcellinus.
Regarding modern sources, Gibbon, to my mind, stands supreme when it comes to giving us a sweeping overview of the Justinianic era. His ability to fashion from a complex, often tangled, sometimes obscure mass of facts a clear, colourful, and coherent narrative, is surely unrivalled. His only fault — if such it can be called — lies in his impatient dismissal (which I’ve touched on in the Notes) of the Christological controversies which occupied so much of Justinian’s time and energy. Also essential as background reading is the magisterial The Later Roman Empire by my old lecturer, the great A.H.M. Jones. I am enormously indebted to my publisher, Hugh Andrew, for lending me many of his books. Especially useful were the following: The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, edited by Michael Maas, a veritable quarry of information regarding all main topics for the period; Robert Browning’s masterly Justinian and Theodora, which provides penetrating insight into what motivated Justinian and the people he was involved with; and Theodora, a marvellous little book by Antony Bridge, which paints a warmly sympathetic picture (and, one feels, a true one) of the bear-keeper’s daughter who became a Roman empress.
For the sake of drama and clarity, I have (as mentioned in the relevant sections in the Notes) gone in for some abridging and telescoping of events in places, without, hopefully, distorting essential historical truth. Anyone who has ever wrestled with the Christological subtleties of the Three Chapters controversy, or tried to form a coherent overview of the Gothic War from the endless (and frankly, often tedious) catalogue of sieges, counter-sieges, marches, counter-marches, blockades, sorties, ambuscades, ruses de guerre, et cetera of Belisarius’ and Narses’ campaigns in Italy, will understand my reasons for doing so.
The Dramatis Personae are, for the most part, real people. The majority needed little fleshing-out on my part, the records being sufficiently detailed for clear individual profiles to emerge, regarding, for example: Belisarius, Narses, John the Cappadocian, Theodora, and, of course, Justinian himself. A richly complex character, the great emperor comes over as a well-intentioned but ultimately tragic figure; someone who, by his own lights tried to do good things, but whose efforts resulted in the impoverishment of the Empire, the ruin of Italy, and a final parting of the ways between the Churches of the East and West.
In telling the story I have, wherever possible (and allowing for a modicum of artistic licence), stuck to the known facts, only giving rein to my imagination where lacunae in the records permitted me to do so. For example, we don’t know if Justinian was personally involved in the Dhu-Nuwas campaign, but — as (theoretical) commander of the eastern army — he was certainly in a position to be so. Again, my making Procopius an agent provocateur dedicated to destabilizing Belisarius, although fictitious, is entirely consistent with his views about the general, plus his location alongside Belisarius in various places during the campaigns in Africa and Italy, as well as in Constantinople when he was prefect of that city.
APPENDIX I
THE ETHNIC AND LINGUISTIC BACKGROUND OF JUSTIN AND JUSTINIAN
Historians have tended, perhaps too uncritically, to accept Procopius’ assertion that Justin and his nephew Justinian were of Thracian stock. I would suggest that this needs some re-examination.
Gibbon points out that Justinian’s original name, and that of his father — Uprauda (Upright) and Ystock (Stock) respectively — were Gothic; evidence, surely, that their owners were also Gothic. Settler-groups of Goths (a Germanic tribe), known as ‘Moeso-Goths’, had been established in the northern parts of the Eastern Empire long before the great Gothic migration across the Danube in 376. (It was for his countrymen living in the East Roman province of Moesia Secunda that Ulfila translated the Bible into Gothic c. 350-60.) Justinian’s and his father’s home village, Tauresium, could well have been such a community (especially considering the pair’s likely Gothic origins), a Gothic enclave within the Latin-speaking province of Dardania. As Justinian’s uncle, Justin, hailed from Bederiana (the district in which Tauresium was located) and very possibly from Tauresium itself, he too could well have been of Gothic, rather than Thracian, stock. Also, I strongly suspect that Justin was not his original name. (‘Justinus’ is an eminently appropriate appellation for a Roman emperor; but for a peasant?* It’s as though Thomas Hardy had named his yeoman character, Gabriel Oak, ‘Marmaduke’ Oak!) Hence my borrowed, and Gothic, name for him — ‘Roderic’. I suggest that Justin, and later his nephew Justinian, would have first arrived in Constantinople speaking, in addition to their mother-tongue of Gothic, basic Latin, but no Greek.
I have suggested that Justinian had slave progenitors. In his Anekdota, Procopius affirms that Justinian was descended from slaves and barbarians; but the Secret History is such a biased source, and one so motivated by malice, that its findings have to be regarded with the greatest suspicion. However, in Chambers’ Encyclopaedia of 1888–1892, the article ‘Justinian’ contains a statement that the future emperor was ‘of obscure parentage, and indeed slave-born’, citing, inter alios, the scholars Isambert and G. Body. On the strength of this, I felt justified in making slave parentage a feature of the story. The article also mentions that Justinian’s ‘original name was Uprauda’, confirming Gibbon’s observation.
If (as on the evidence seems likely) Justin’s sister Bigleniza was married to a Goth living in a Gothic community, it is not unreasonable to suppose that she too was of Gothic origin — an inheritance that would be shared by her brother. (Admittedly, ‘Bigleniza’ is not a particularly Gothic-sounding name, which is why I have hinted in the story that she may have had some Thracian blood.) In the end, perhaps, any attempt to define Justin as either a Goth or a Thracian runs into the sand. As Robert Browning says in Justinian and Theodora (in the context of Belisarius’ birth c. 505), ‘Romanized Thracians were much mingled with Gothic stock by this time’ — which allows me, I think, to present Justin in the story as of Gothic rather than Thracian origin.