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Justinian and the Historian Procopius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

J. A. S. Evans
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Extract

The Emperor Justinian, who succeeded his uncle Justin to the throne of Byzantium in A.d. 527, probably never intended to mark an epoch. Not, at least, the epoch which the modern historian must assign him. For his reign is in a sense a watershed; he was the last Roman emperor and the first Byzantine one. The reality of a Roman Empire embracing the whole Mediterranean had suffered a little before Justinian owing to circumstances. Among the Franks in Gaul and the Visigoths in Spain, it was more fiction than fact, but it was a fiction which was still cherished, and not merely in Constantinople. After Justinian, the concept was not dead; but it was clearly losing force.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , October 1970 , pp. 218 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1970

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References

page 218 note 1 Cf. the remarks of Trevor-Roper, Hugh, The Rise of Christian Europe (London, 1965), 69–70.Google Scholar

page 218 note 2 Procopius, , De Aedif. iv. 1. 17–27.Google Scholar

page 218 note 3 Procopius, , Anekdota 6. 1–11.Google Scholar

page 219 note 1 Wars i. 3.Google Scholar

page 219 note 2 Cf. Rubin, B., Zeit. der deutsche Morgenland Gesell. xxxv (1960), 55–63.Google Scholar

page 219 note 3 Downey, G., TAPhA lxxviii (1947), 172.Google Scholar The excellent sources of information which Procopius had for his De Aedificiis have been emphasized lately by MacKay, P. A., AJA lxvii (1963), 241–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; presumably he had access to official records, for otherwise it would be difficult to account for the breadth of his knowledge.

page 220 note 1 On Gaza at this time, see Downey, G., Gaza in the Sixth Century (Norman, Okla., 1963), 99–116.Google Scholar

page 220 note 2 Wars i. 12. 24.Google Scholar

page 220 note 3 Wars iii. 14.Google Scholar

page 220 note 4 Wars iii. 15. 35.Google Scholar

page 221 note 1 Wars ii. 22. 9.Google Scholar

page 221 note 2 Krumbacher, K., Geschichte der Byzant. Litt. (Munich, 1897) i. 231.Google Scholar

page 222 note 1 On this, see my ‘The Dates of the Anekdota and the De Aedificiis of Procopius’, CP, lxiv (1969), 29–30Google Scholar; ‘Procopius of Caesarea and the Emperor Justinian’, Canadian Historical Association, Historical Papers, 1968, 126–39.Google Scholar

page 223 note 1 Cf. Russell, J. C., ‘Late Ancient and Mediaeval Population’, Trans, of the Am. Philosophical Soc., new ser. xlviii (1958), 37–42.Google Scholar

page 223 note 2 Anek. 18. 38Google Scholar and De Aedif. ii. 7. 2–16.Google Scholar On this see CP lxiv (1969), 29–30.Google Scholar

page 223 note 3 Yet the general tendency among modern historians is to accept Procopius' account of Theodora's early life as generally accurate, but to note that even Procopius does not accuse the empress of any infidelity after her marriage to Justinian. See in general Ch. Diehl, , Théodora, Imperatrice de Byzance (Paris, 1904).Google Scholar

page 223 note 4 The unfinished state of the De Aedificiis should probably be accounted for by the death of its author, who therefore must have died about 560. He was probably born about 500.