I now come to the description of the private life and character of
Justinian and Theodora, and of the manner in which they rent the Roman
Empire asunder.
At the time when Leo occupied the imperial throne, three young
husbandmen, of Illyrian birth, named Zimarchus, Ditybistus, and Justin
of Bederiane, in order to escape from their utter poverty at home,
determined to enlist in the army. They made their way to Byzantium on
foot, with knapsacks of goat's-hair on their shoulders, containing
nothing but a few biscuits which they had brought from home. On their
arrival they were enrolled in the army, and chosen by the Emperor
amongst the palace guards, being all three very handsome young men.
Afterwards, when Anastasius succeeded to the throne, war broke out
with the Isaurians who had rebelled against him. He sent a
considerable army against them, under the command of John, surnamed
"The Hunchback." This John arrested Justin for some offence and
imprisoned him, and on the following day would have put him to death,
had not a vision which he beheld in his sleep prevented him. He said
that, in his dream, a man of great stature, and in every way more than
human, bade him release the man whom he had that day cast into prison.
When he awoke, he made light of this vision; and, although he saw
again the same vision and heard the same words on the following night,
not even then would he obey the command. But the vision appeared for
the third time, and threatened him terribly if he did not do what he
was commanded, and warned him that he would thereafter stand in great
need of this man and his family when his wrath should fall upon him.
Thus did Justin escape death.
As time went on, this Justin rose to great power. The Emperor
Anastasius appointed him commander of the palace guard, and when that
prince died, he, by the influence of his position, seized the throne.
He was by this time an old man with one foot in the grave, so utterly
ignorant of letters, that one may say that he did not know the
alphabet--a thing which had never happened before amongst the Romans.
It had been customary for the Emperor to sign the decrees which were
issued by him with his own hand, whereas he neither made decrees, nor
was capable of conducting affairs; but Proclus, who acted as his
quaestor and colleague, arranged everything at his own pleasure.
However, in order that the Emperor's signature might appear in public
documents, his officers invented the following device. They had the
shapes of four Latin letters cut in a thin piece of wood, and then,
having dipped the pen in the imperial ink used by the Emperors in
writing, they put it in the Emperor's hand, and laying the piece of
wood on the paper to be signed, they guided the Emperor's hand and pen
round the outline of the four letters, making it follow all the
convolutions cut in the wood, and then retired with the result as the
Emperor's signature. This was how the affairs of the Empire were
managed under Justin. His wife was named Lupicina; she was a slave and
a barbarian, whom he had bought for his mistress, and at the close of
his life she ascended the throne with him. Justin was not strong
enough to do his subjects either good or harm; he was utterly simple,
a very poor speaker, and a complete boor. Justinian was his sister's
son, who, when quite a young man, practically governed the State, and
brought more woe upon the Romans than anyone we have ever heard of
before. He was ever ready to commit unrighteous murders and rob men of
their estates, and thought nothing of making away with tens of
thousands of men who had given him no cause for doing so. He had no
respect for established institutions, but loved innovations in
everything, and was, in short, the greatest destroyer of all the best
of his country's institutions. As for the plague, of which I have made
mention in the former books of my history, although it ravaged the
whole earth, yet as many men escaped it as perished by it, some of
them never taking the contagion, and others recovering from it. But no
human being in all the Roman Empire could escape from this man, for he
was like some second plague sent down from heaven to prey upon the
whole human race, which left no man untouched. Some he slew without
cause, others he reduced to a struggle with poverty, so that their
case was more piteous than that of the dead, and they prayed daily to
be relieved from their misery even by the most cruel death, while he
robbed others of their lives and their property at the same time.
Not content with ruining the Roman Empire, he carried out the conquest
of Italy and Africa, merely that he might treat them in the same way,
and destroy the inhabitants, together with those who were already his
subjects. He had not been in authority ten days before he put to death
Amantius, the chief of the palace eunuchs, with several others. He had
no complaint whatever against the man beyond that he had said
something offensive about John the archbishop of the city. Owing to
this, he became the most dreaded of all men in the world.
Immediately afterwards he sent for the usurper Vitalianus, to whom he
had given the most solemn pledges for his safety, and had partaken of
the Christian sacrament with him. Shortly afterwards, he conceived
some suspicion of him, and made away with him and his companions in
the palace, for no reason whatever, thus showing that he scorned to
observe even the most solemn oaths.