INTRODUCTION
Procopius is known to posterity as the historian of the eventful reign
of Justinian (527-565 A.D.), and the chronicler of the great deeds of
the general Belisarius. He was born late in the fifth century in the
city of Caesarea in Palestine. As to his education and early years we
are not informed, but we know that he studied to fit himself for the
legal profession. He came as a young man to Constantinople, and seems to
have made his mark immediately. For as early as the year 527 he was
appointed legal adviser and private secretary[1] to Belisarius, then a
very young man who had been serving on the staff of the general
Justinian, and had only recently been advanced to the office of general.
Shortly after this Justinian was called by his uncle Justinus to share
the throne of the Roman Empire, and four months later Justinus died,
leaving Justinian sole emperor of the Romans. Thus the stage was set for
the scenes which are presented in the pages of Procopius. His own
activity continued till well nigh the end of Justinian's life, and he
seems to have outlived his hero, Belisarius.
During the eventful years of Belisarius' campaigning in Africa, in
Italy, and in the East, Procopius was moving about with him and was an
eye-witness of the events he describes in his writings. In 527 we find
him in Mesopotamia; in 533 he accompanied Belisarius to Africa; and in
536 he journeyed with him to Italy. He was therefore quite correct in
the assertion which he makes rather modestly in the introduction of his
history, that he was better qualified than anyone else to write the
history of that period. Besides his intimacy with Belisarius it should
be added that his position gave him the further advantage of a certain
standing at the imperial court in Constantinople, and brought him the
acquaintance of many of the leading men of his day. Thus we have the
testimony of one intimately associated with the administration, and
this, together with the importance of the events through which he lived,
makes his record exceedingly interesting as well as historically
important. One must admit that his position was not one to encourage
impartiality in his presentation of facts, and that the imperial favour
was not won by plain speaking; nevertheless we have before us a man who
could not obliterate himself enough to play the abject flatterer always,
and he gives us the reverse, too, of his brilliant picture, as we shall
see presently.
Procopius' three works give us a fairly complete account of the reign of
Justinian up till near the year 560 A.D., and he has done us the favour
of setting forth three different points of view which vary so widely
that posterity has sometimes found it difficult to reconcile them. His
greatest work, as well as his earliest, is the _History of the Wars_, in
eight books. The material is not arranged strictly according to
chronological sequence, but so that the progress of events may be traced
separately in each one of three wars. Thus the first two books are given
over to the Persian wars, the next two contain the account of the war
waged against the Vandals in Africa, the three following describe the
struggle against the Goths in Italy. These seven books were published
together first, and the eighth book was added later as a supplement to
bring the history up to about the date of 554, being a general account
of events in different parts of the empire. It is necessary to bear in
mind that the wars described 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, since it is a storehouse of information
concerning the internal administration of the empire.
The style of Procopius is in general clear and straightforward, and
shews the mind of one who endeavours to speak the truth in simple
language wherever he is not under constraint to avoid it. At the same
time he is not ignorant of the arts of rhetoric, and especially in the
speeches he is fond of introducing sounding phrases and sententious
statements. He was a great admirer of the classical writers of prose,
and their influence is everywhere apparent in his writing; in particular
he is much indebted to the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, and he
borrows from them many expressions and turns of phrase. But the Greek
which he writes is not the pure Attic, and we find many evidences of the
influence of the contemporary spoken language.
Procopius writes at times as a Christian, and at times as one imbued
with the ideas of the ancient religion of Greece. Doubtless his study of
the classical writers led him into this, perhaps unconsciously. At any
rate it seems not to have been with him a matter in which even
consistency was demanded. It was politic to espouse the religion of the
state, but still he often allows himself to speak as if he were a
contemporary of Thucydides.
The text followed is that of Haury, issued in the Teubner series,
1905-1913.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The _editio princeps_ of Procopius was published by David Hoeschel,
Augsburg, 1607; the _Secret History_ was not included, and only
summaries of the six books of the work _On the Buildings_ were given.
The edition is not important except as being the first.
The _Secret History_ was printed for the first time separately with a
Latin translation by Alemannus, Lyon, 1623.
The first complete edition was that of Maltretus, Paris, 1661-63,
reprinted in Venice, 1729; the edition included a Latin translation of
all the works, which was taken over into the edition of Procopius in the
_Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae_ by Dindorf, Bonn, 1833-38.
Two editions of recent years are to be mentioned: Domenico Comparetti,
_La Guerra Gotica di Procopio di Cesarea_; testo Greco emendato sui
manoscritti con traduxione Italiana, Rome, 1895-98; 3 vols. Jacobus
Haury, _Procopii Caesariensis Opera Omnia_, Leipzig, 1905-13; 3 vols.
(Bibl. Teub.).
Among a number of works on Procopius or on special subjects connected
with his writings the following may be mentioned:
Felix Dahn: _Procopius von Cäsarea_, Berlin, 1865.
Julius Jung: _Geographisch-Historisches bei Procopius von Caesarea_,
Wiener Studien 5 (1883) 85-115.
W. Gundlach: _Quaestiones Procopianae_, Progr. Hanau, 1861, also
Dissert. Marburg, 1861.
J. Haury: _Procopiana_, Progr. Augsburg, 1891.
B. Pancenko: _Ueber die Geheimgeschichte des Prokop_, Viz. Vrem. 2
(1895).
J. Haury: _Zur Beurteilung des Geschichtschreibers Procopius von
Caesarea_, Munich, 1896-97.
1971. The Teubner edition in 4 volumes by J. Haury (1905-1913) has been
re-edited by G. Wirth.
FOOTNOTE:
[1]
[Greek: xymboulos], _Proc. Bell._ I. xii. 24. He is elsewhere referred
to as [Greek: paredros] or [Greek: hypographeus].
PROCOPIUS OF CAESAREA
HISTORY OF THE WARS: BOOK I
THE PERSIAN WAR
PROCOPIUS OF CAESAREA
HISTORY OF THE WARS: