How vigorously, even cruelly, this unity was enforced will be seen in the Secret History; and how bitterly the re-conquests of Italy, Africa and southern Spain were paid for by the oppressed subjects of an ambitious Emperor: and all for nothing, since Justinian’s successors immediately abandoned all control of the Western provinces. Only one physical memorial built by Justinian still stands, the Church of St. Sophia. From its minarets in Constantinople the faithful are yet called to prayer. Only, to make the irony complete, it is the Allah of Mohammed whom the faithful have worshipped in this church of Rome, since the year of Christ 1453.

Of the final fall of the Empire there were, as we have seen, omens enough in Justinian’s time. But decadence is notably colorful, and the autumn sunset of Rome was no exception to the rule. Procopius’s Constantinople is as gaudily cinematographic as one might expect when one recalls that the moving picture palaces of today boast of their Byzantine architecture. Here are the nimble Greeks of old Byzantium; sailors from the Pillars of Hercules jostling elbows with Christianized Jews; visiting Persian ambassadors or spies; Vandal, Visigoth, Ostrogoth, and all the barbarian tribal emissaries, staring about contemptuously at the sights of an effete metropolis; here marches a company of the ever-present Pretorian Guard, while the also ever-present crowds of gaily dressed courtesans giggle and whisper as the soldiers march past.

Here, possibly, strides even a Roman (though more likely he bears some such name as Demosthenes) conspicuous in his old-fashioned bordered toga as he goes to the Senate—to vote as the Emperor commands.

Here are the partisans of the Hippodrome teams, wearing their rival Blue or Green colors, and a sharp dagger too, for Blues and Greens seldom meet without blood being spilled in the open street. Here waddle obese eunuchs, with fat noses held high in curious pride: but their frown may mean confiscation of your estates, their scowl your death by the torture rack. Here is the Forum, where you may buy anything from love to a Senate decision. A common girl costs a copper coin; a judge’s favor, of course, requires gold. A girl who can play the harp or the flute is somewhat expensive, though less so, of course, than one of the ladies of the court of Theodora. The august Empress herself is, to be sure, a penitent and chaste wife to Justinian, though they say that in the old days—but one does not even whisper of those days, for her spies are everywhere … Even a Procopius does not gossip about Theodora’s early days, and nights, within his own household.

There had been another Procopius who had dared, not only to criticize an Emperor, but to seize the very throne of Constantinople and hold it, for a time, against the timorous Valens, claiming his dying cousin Julian had willed the purple to him, as the Apostate, and Paganism with him, died. And presently that other Procopius was beheaded.

So a second Procopius, who has had enough of wars and Emperors, neither gossips of Theodora in the presence of his family nor claims any kinship to a well-punished usurper, let alone to a Julian who acknowledged the fashionable Galilean only with his dying, and that ironic, breath. No, our Procopius does not whisper these things, except in the safer fashion of King Midas’s barber, who confided to the reticent ground the secret of his master’s inordinately long ears …

If Justinian is an ass, the fact is inscribed carefully in a well-guarded notebook; and other dangerous anecdotes, as they occur to the critic, are similarly jotted down now and then, as Procopius is able to steal an occasional hour alone. When he has written the whole story, he hides the manuscript somewhere against the day when Justinian dies. Then, perhaps, he may publish this Secret History; reading it, for the first safe time aloud, to the book publisher’s copying slaves, revising his sentences as he dictates: for in the first careless draft there must be some few repetitions of phrase or even of subject matter, requiring due correction by the celebrated author of the Military Histories, a Senator and a Rhetorician, well schooled in the tradition of the old Athenian masters.

Only it seems that Justinian did not, like the cancerous Theodora, die quite soon enough. Or else the author was inspired to foresee that critics of a later era would prefer the Secret History unrevised, as being the more interesting and forceful for being penned in a white heat of furious earnestness. True, fury is less generally desirable than cool impartiality in a historian, and a chronicler does not, usually, report that in his judgment the Emperor and Empress of his age were devils in human form, with supernatural powers causing earthquakes and pestilences. But one should remember that devils were very much believed in at this Christian time; and if earlier Emperors of Rome had claimed due worship as gods, certainly even the most honest of historians might conceivably give his sovereigns full spiritual credit, so long as they did not hear about it.

Thus, as you will find, full credit is what he gave them, and (if the appreciative word of a till now unoffending translator be permitted) Procopiously.

In the following text, the chapter divisions are those of the manuscript; the chapter titles, however, are an added whim of the romantic editor, as are the occasional notes in the helpful glossary. And with no more to-do than this slight overture explaining the play for those who like to come early and read the program, he turns to make his formal bow and express a hope that the audience will find as much instruction and entertainment in the production, which starts immediately, as he has found in its rehearsal. Here is a narrative with the fascination of the elder Dumas; but it is more than a collection of anecdotes of intrigue: it is history, in which the purple past of Rome lives again in spirited pictures, thrown, if you care for a further metaphor, upon the screen of the present. For the modern reader, though he will find here many things that are, indeed, all too familiar in present society, may still sigh with relief that such thorough and unmitigated tyrants as the affable Justinian and the prankish Theodora are no longer permitted to pillage their subjects with an utterly unchecked hand. And so the curtain rises. “Once upon a time, fourteen hundred years ago—”

Richard Atwater

Foreword by the Historian

In what I have written on the Roman wars up to the present point, the story was arranged in chronological order and as completely as the times then permitted. What I shall write now follows a different plan, supplementing the previous formal chronicle with a disclosure of what really happened throughout the Roman Empire. You see, it was not possible, during the life of certain persons, to write the truth of what they did, as a historian should. If I had, their hordes of spies would have found out about it, and they would have put me to a most horrible death. I could not even trust my nearest relatives. That is why I was compelled to hide the real explanation of many matters glossed over in my previous books.

These secrets it is now my duty to tell and reveal the remaining hidden matters and motives. Yet when I approach this different task, I find it hard indeed to have to stammer and retract what I have written before about the lives of Justinian and Theodora. Worse yet, it occurs to me that what I am now about to tell will seem neither probable nor plausible to future generations, especially as time flows on and my story becomes ancient history. I fear they may think me a writer of fiction, and even put me among the poets.

However, I have this much to cheer me, that my account will not be unendorsed by other testimony: so I shall not shrink from the duty of completing this work. For the men of today, who know best the truth of these matters, will be trustworthy witnesses to posterity of the accuracy of my evidence.

Still another thing for a long time deferred my passion to relieve myself of this untold tale. For I wondered if it might be prejudicial to future generations, and the wickedness of these deeds had not best remain unknown to later times: lest future tyrants, hearing, might emulate them. It is deplorably natural that most monarchs mimic the sins of their predecessors and are most readily disposed to turn to the evils of the past.

But, finally, I was again constrained to proceed with this history, for the reason that future tyrants may see also that those who thus err cannot avoid retribution in the end, since the persons of whom I write suffered that judgment. Furthermore, the disclosure of these actions and tempers will be published for all time, and in consequence others will perhaps feel less urge to transgress.

For who now would know of the unchastened life of Semiramis or the madness of Sardanapalus or Nero, if the record had not thus been written by men of their own times? Besides, even those who suffer similarly from later tyrants will not find this narrative quite unprofitable. For the miserable find comfort in the philosophy that not on them alone has evil fallen.

Accordingly, I begin the tale. First I shall reveal the folly of Belisarius,1 and then the depravity of Justinian and Theodora.

The Secret History

I

How the Great General Belisarius Was Hoodwinked by His Wife, Whose Lover Became a Monk

The father of Belisarius’s wife, a lady whom I have mentioned in my former books, was (and so was her grandfather) a charioteer, exhibiting that trade in Constantinople and Thessalonica. Her mother was one of the wenches of the theater; and she herself from the first led an utterly wanton life. Acquainted with magic drugs used by her parents before her, she learned how to use those of compelling qualities and became the wedded wife of Belisarius, after having already borne many children.

Now she was unfaithful as a wife from the start, but was careful to conceal her indiscretions by the usual precautions; not from any awe of her spouse (for she never felt any shame at anything, and fooled him easily with her deceptions), but because she feared the punishment of the Empress. For Theodora hated her, and had already shown her teeth. But when that Queen became involved in difficulties, she won her friendship by helping her, first to destroy Silverius, as shall be related presently,2 and later to ruin John of Cappadocia,3 as I have told elsewhere. After that, she became more and more fearless, and casting all concealment aside, abandoned herself to the winds of desire.

There was a youth from Thrace in the house of Belisarius: Theodosius by name, and of the Eunomian heresy by descent. On the eve of his expedition to Libya, Belisarius baptized this boy in holy water and received him in his arms as a member henceforth of the family, welcoming him with his wife as their son, according to the Christian rite of adoption. And Antonina not only embraced Theodosius with reasonable fondness as her son by holy word, and thus cared for him, but soon, while her husband was away on his campaign, became wildly in love with him; and, out of her senses with this malady, shook off all fear and shame of God and man. She began by enjoying him surreptitiously, and ended by dallying with him in the presence of the men servants and waiting maids. For she was now possessed by passion and, openly overwhelmed with love, could see no hindrance to its consummation.

Once, in Carthage, Belisarius caught her in the very act, but allowed himself to be deceived by his wife. Finding the two in an underground room, he was very angry; but she said, showing no fear or attempt to keep anything hidden, “I came here with the boy to bury the most precious part of our plunder, where the Emperor will not discover it.” So she said by way of excuse, and he dismissed the matter as if he believed her, even as he saw Theodosius’s trousers belt somewhat unmodestly unfastened. For so bound by love for the woman was he, that he preferred to distrust the evidence of his own eyes.

As her folly progressed to an indescribable extent, those who saw what was going on kept silent, except one slave, Macedonia by name. When Belisarius was in Syracuse as the conqueror of Sicily, she made her master swear solemnly never to betray her to her mistress, and then told him the whole story, presenting as witnesses two slave boys attending the bedchamber.

When he heard this, Belisarius ordered one of his guards to put Theodosius away; but the latter learned of this in time to flee to Ephesus. For most of the servants, inspired by the weakness of the husband’s character, were more anxious to please his wife than to show loyalty to him, and so betrayed the order he had given. But Constantine,4 when he saw Belisarius’s grief at what had befallen him, sympathized entirely except to comment, “I would have tried to kill the woman rather than the young man.” Antonina heard of this, and hated him in secret. How malicious was her spite against him shall be shown; for she was a scorpion who could hide her sting.

But not long after this, by the enchantment either of philtres or of her caresses, she persuaded her husband that the charges against her were untrue. Without more ado he sent word to Theodosius to return, and promised to turn Macedonia and the two slave boys over to his wife. She first cruelly cut out their tongues, it is said, and then cut their bodies into little bits which were put into sacks and thrown into the sea. One of her slaves, Eugenius, who had already wrought the outrage on Silverius, helped her in this crime.

And it was not long after this that Belisarius was persuaded by his wife to kill Constantine. What happened at that time concerning Presidius and the daggers5 I have narrated in my previous books. For while Belisarius would have preferred to let Constantine alone, Antonina gave him no peace until his remark, which I have just repeated, was avenged. And as a result of this murder, much enmity was aroused against Belisarius in the hearts of the Emperor and all the most important of the Romans.

So matters progressed. But Theodosius said he was unable to return to Italy, where Belisarius and Antonina were now staying, unless Photius6 were put out of the way. For this Photius was the sort who would bite if anyone got the better of him in anything, and he had reason to be choked with indignation at Theodosius. Though he was the rightful son, he was utterly disregarded while the other grew in power and riches: they say that from the two palaces at Carthage and Ravenna Theodosius had taken plunder amounting to a hundred centenaries,7 as he alone had been given the management of these conquered properties.

But Antonina, when she learned of Theodosius’s fear, never ceased laying snares for her son and planning deadly plots against his welfare, until he saw he would have to escape to Constantinople if he wished to live. Then Theodosius came to Italy and her. There they stayed in the satisfaction of their love, unhindered by the complaisant husband; and later she took them both to Constantinople. There Theodosius became so worried lest the affair became generally known, that he was at his wit’s end. He saw it would be impossible to fool everybody, as the woman was no longer able to conceal her passion and indulge it secretly, but thought nothing of being in fact and in reputation an avowed adulteress.

Therefore he went back to Ephesus, and having his head shaved after the religious custom, became a monk. Whereupon Antonina, insane over her loss, exhibited her grief by donning mourning; and went around the house shrieking and wailing, lamenting even in the presence of her husband what a good friend she had lost, how faithful, how tender, how loving, how energetic! In the end, even her spouse was won over to join in her sorrow. And so the poor wretch wept too, calling for his beloved Theodosius. Later he even went to the Emperor and implored both him and the Empress, till they consented to summon Theodosius to return, as one who was and would always be a necessity in the house of Belisarius.

But Theodosius refused to leave his monastery, saying he was completely resolved to give himself forever to the cloistered life. This noble pronouncement, however, was not entirely sincere, for he was aware that as soon as Belisarius left Constantinople, it would be possible for him to come secretly to Antonina. Which, indeed, he did.

II

How Belated Jealousy Affected Belisarius’s Military Judgment, to the Joy of the Enemy

For soon Belisarius went off to war on Chosroes,8 and he took Photius with him; but Antonina remained behind, though this was contrary to her usual habit. She had always preferred to voyage wherever her husband went, lest he, being alone, come to his senses and, forgetting her enchantments, think of her for once as she deserved. But now, so that Theodosius might have free access to her, she planned once more how to rid herself permanently of Photius. She bribed some of Belisarius’s guards to slander and insult her son at all times; while she, writing letters almost every day, denounced him, and thus set everything in motion against him. Compelled by all of this to counterplot against his mother, Photius got a witness to come from Constantinople with evidence of Theodosius’s commerce with Antonina, took him to Belisarius, and commanded him to tell the whole story.

When Belisarius heard it, he became passionately angry, fell at Photius’s feet, kissed them, and begged him to revenge one who had been so wronged by those who should least have treated him thus. “My dearest boy,” he said, “your father, whoever he was, you have never known, for he left you at your mother’s breast when the sands of his life were measured. Nor have you even benefited from his estate, since he was not over-blessed with wealth. But brought up by me, though I was only your stepfather, you have arrived at an age where it becomes you to avenge my wrongs. I, who have raised you to consular rank, and given you the opportunity of acquiring such riches, might call myself your father and mother and entire kindred, and I would be right, my son. For it is not by their kinship of blood, but by their friendly deeds that men are wont to measure their bonds to one another.

“Now the hour has come, when you must not only look on me in the ruin of my household and the loss of my greatest treasure, but as one sharing the shame of your mother in the reproach of all mankind. And consider too, that the sins of women injure not only their husbands, but touch even more bitterly their children, whose reputation suffers the greater from this reason, that they are expected to inherit the disposition of those who bore them.

“Yet remember this of me, that I still love my wife exceedingly well; and if it is in my power to punish the ruiner of my house, to her I shall do no hurt. But while Theodosius is present, I cannot condone this charge against her.”

When he had heard this, Photius agreed to serve him in everything; but at the same time he was afraid lest some trouble might come to himself from it, for he had little confidence in Belisarius’s strength of will, where his wife was concerned. And among other unhappy possibilities, he remembered with distaste what had happened to Macedonia. So he had Belisarius exchange with him all the oaths that are held most sacred and binding among Christians, and each swore never to betray the other, even in the most mortal peril.