Justinian

‘Who the hell cares if they do?’ chuckled the other. He belched, eased his gross bulk on its stool, and scratched his bottom. ‘That’s better,’ he went on, with a sigh of satisfaction. ‘Wake up, Serenity. The Senate and the Council? — redundant anachronisms, whose only purpose is to allow the aristocracy to hang on to the comforting illusion that they need to be consulted. They’ve no longer any place in the running of a modern Empire. The only power that matters is held by you, the emperor. Best you tell ’em that and end the current farce of discussions in the House.’

John was right, thought Justinian, as a tremendously exciting and liberating conviction slowly began to form in his mind. Could it be by mere chance that a barbarian lad from the backwoods of Dardania had become emperor of New Rome? Surely something so unprecedented, so astonishing, could only be evidence of divine intention? — as it must also have been God’s purpose, to send him Theodora in his hour of need.

Elated and enthused by this sudden revelation, Justinian dismissed the prefect with instructions to implement with all speed the measures he had proposed. Then he sent word, via his Master of Offices, to all senators and councillors presently residing in the capital or its vicinity, to attend him in the Magnaura three days hence.

‘It’s outrageous!’ quavered old Methodius, the Caput Senatus, as the senators and councillors filed out of the audience chamber. ‘He hasn’t even the decency to tell us in the Senate House that we’re surplus to requirements.’

‘Jumped-up nobody,’ declared a councillor. ‘Anastasius, or even Zeno — that hick from Isauria — would never have behaved like that.’

‘Just who does he think he is?’ stormed a silver-haired senator. ‘Presuming he can run the Empire without consulting us — the people’s representatives. So much for S.P.Q.R.* Let’s face it, gentlemen — it seems we’re now to live under a totalitarian autocracy.’

‘Tyranny, more like,’ put in another senator, adding darkly, ‘A pity those nephews of Anastasius — Hypatius, Probus, and Pompeius — were passed over as possible successors. Any one of them would be ten times better than Justinian. At least he’d have been one of us.’

Another influential faction to be bitterly offended when Justinian ended his association with its members was the Blues. ‘Thinks just because he’s on the throne, he can chuck us aside like an old shoe,’ complained the manager of the Blues to his inner circle of henchmen. ‘He’s conveniently forgetting it was us who helped to put him there. Well, boys, two can play at that game. We can make it hot for him in the Hippodrome — very hot indeed. Come the racing season, what say we do just that? Agreed?’

‘Agreed!’ the others roared in unison.

In furtherance of achieving his goal of religious uniformity, Justinian began a dialogue with the Monophysites. True to his promise to Theodora, the persecution of the sect was relaxed, exiles permitted to return, and Monophysite leaders, especially Timothy and Severus, invited to attend a religious conference in the capital, to be chaired by Justinian himself. By the conclusion of the synod, a face-saving formula (carefully avoiding the expression ‘two natures’, and emphasizing the ‘one person’ of the Trinity) had been cobbled together, with which Justinian declared himself satisfied. More fudge than solution, its chief effect was to enrage the leaders of Orthodox Catholicism (the Empire’s official creed), who saw it as a shameful giving in to heretics.

Also dismayed and outraged as a result of the emperor’s religious policy were intellectuals throughout the Empire (collectively, a powerful group capable of influencing public opinion), when (the sale of its assets providing a welcome bonus to the Treasury), the ancient University of Athens was closed.* Because the institution contained the famous Academy — where Plato and Aristotle had once held court — it was seen by Justinian as a bastion of pagan thought. Its two leading professors, Damascius and Simplicius, along with five of their colleagues, thereupon accepted an invitation from the Peacock Throne to come and teach in Persia. Their acceptance constituted a massive and humiliating snub, not only to Justinian himself, but to the whole Roman Empire whose supposedly enlightened values he was held to represent.

John of Cappadocia, a spiteful man of humble origins, needed no encouragement to set about his task with relish, seeing as a bonus the chance to get even with the upper classes, whose aspersions in the past he had endured with impotent resentment. Arriving one day with his retinue of compulsores — thugs whose function was to ‘persuade’ reluctant citizens to settle their tax dues — at the estate, in the Anatolian province of Galatia, of one Maxentius, a wealthy landowner, John marched into the villa, and confronted the owner partaking of his prandium or midday meal.

‘What’s the meaning of this?’ demanded Maxentius, rising, his fine patrician features dark with anger. ‘How dare you burst into my house uninvited.’

‘Tax defaults sir, I’m afraid,’ murmured the prefect in an apologetic-sounding voice. ‘You seem to have overlooked declaring some of your assets. An oversight, I’m sure sir. Perhaps you’d care to clear things up?’

‘See my steward, if you must,’ snapped the other. ‘You’ll find my tax returns all logged and paid in full.’

‘But only for this estate, sir,’ persisted John in reasonable tones. He shook his head regretfully. ‘You see, we know all about those warehouses in Tarsus, and your. . “understanding”, shall we call it, with the harbourmaster. Very co-operative he proved — after two of his fingers got broken. Nasty accident. All those Chinese silks smuggled in from Persia, those amphorae of olive oil from Crete, wines from Syria. . Want me to go on, sir?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ blustered Maxentius, his face suddenly turning pale.

‘Tut, tut.’ John sucked in his cheeks and wagged an admonitory finger. ‘That wasn’t very wise, if I may say so, sir.’ He nodded to his followers who, removing cudgels from their belts, advanced towards the landowner.

‘I’m a decurion — a leading citizen!’ cried Maxentius. ‘You can’t touch me — it’s against the law.’

‘No longer, I’m afraid, sir. Times, they are a-changing. All tax evaders, whatever their rank, are now liable for physical coercion. But only if they prove. . ah, “unaccommodating”, let us say. .’

Ten minutes later, Maxentius, now with two cracked ribs and bruises purpling his face, signed a list of his undeclared assets with the appropriate amount of tax entered beside each item.

‘Collect what’s owing from my steward,’ mumbled Maxentius between split and swollen lips.

‘Thank you, sir. You’ve really been most helpful.’

In the second year of what could virtually be called their joint reign, Justinian and Theodora received news that Antioch had been devastated by a terrible earthquake. Generous and compassionate by nature, they hastened to disburse from the Res Privata and the Sacrae Largitiones — the Private and Public Purses — vast amounts of money to rebuild both the stricken city and the lives of its inhabitants. An individual beneficiary from their largesse was Macedonia. ‘We must do all we can to help our friend,’ Justinian declared to his spouse. ‘While her house is being restored and her business rehabilitated, she must come and live in the Imperial Palace.’

Theodora looked forward to the arrival of her former lover with a mixture of delight and trepidation. The deep love she had for Justinian was the steady glow or rather than the roaring flames of eros which she had experienced with Macedonia. When they met again, would those flames rekindle and consume them both, causing them to consummate a mutual passion? She had never been unfaithful to Justinian, nor had she been tempted in the slightest to form any liaison outwith marriage. So far. But would any resumption of her affair with Macedonia constitute adultery? Probably not — at least in the strict legal sense, she thought.

In Roman Law, the question of adultery only arose when the progeny of a marriage could be shown to be other than the father’s by his spouse. So long as legitimate inheritance was not threatened, liaisons outwith marriage, though strongly disapproved of by the Church, could not be held to be adulterous. Even so. . Theodora made up her mind that she and Macedonia would resume their relationship as dear friends, and nothing more. She would not do anything that might be held to betray Justinian or cause him hurt. Anyway, temptation would be kept at arms’s length; the month being July, Theodora was, as usual, residing in her summer palace at Hieron, a small town on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus.

Assuming that Macedonia would be given the use of a suite in the Imperial Palace in the capital, Theodora was taken aback when Justinian suggested that Macedonia join Theodora at Hieron. ‘You two have years of gossip to catch up on,’ he declared with a fond smile. ‘Living in the palace on her own, poor Macedonia would soon get bored, despite your no doubt frequent visits.’

Accordingly, after a formal reception for Macedonia followed by a grand dinner at the palace (a tinglingly polite affair), the two women were conveyed by litter and private ferry to Hieron. At last, after Macedonia had been introduced to the household, and the slaves had unpacked her luggage in her suite, she and Theodora found