Justinian

his minion would not escape entirely a measure of just retribution.

On the fifteenth day of October, the Palace, especially its kitchens, hummed with activity concerning preparations for the banquet to be hosted by the emperor. Cleaning, tidying, arranging, checking lists, scores of menials and slaves, chivvied by silentiarii implementing the instructions of the Magister Officiorum — Peter the Patrician — transformed the Triklinos or state banqueting hall into a space of glittering magnificence, with couches of rare woods decked with silken cushions, elegant tables supporting dishes, flagons, bowls, and goblets, all of solid gold and finest workmanship, and everywhere swags and garlands of sweet-smelling flowers.

Mid-afternoon, and Justinian’s guests — the great and good of Constantinople, resplendent in their robes of office — began arriving: senators, patricians, generals, bishops, the Patriarch. After being announced by the master of ceremonies, these were shepherded to their places by silentiarii. Smiling, affable, welcoming to all, Justinian was the very model of a gracious host, his mood serene and happy following the morning’s service of re-dedication in Hagia Sophia, its restored dome more glorious even than before.

Course followed course of exquisite food, each accompanied by the appropriate wine; then, when the lamps had been lit and the last course finished, the master of ceremonies proposed a toast to, ‘Flavius Anicius Justinianus — our Thrice-Blessed Augustus, Restorer of the Roman World.’

All rose and raised their goblets. Then a collective gasp of horror burst from the assembled guests as three senators, placed nearest to the emperor, drew daggers from beneath their robes and stepped towards Justinian. But before they could strike, they were surrounded, overpowered, and disarmed by vigiles disguised as servants. Bursting free from his captors, one of the would-be assassins grabbed a carving knife from a table and, before he could be re-apprehended, drew the blade across his throat. Spouting in scarlet jets from severed arteries, blood fountained through the air, splashing Justinian’s purple robe.

In a dungeon deep in the bowels of the Praetorium, the remaining two conspirators in manacles — Marcellus being the one who had died by his own hand — stood before the seated prefect. The room’s other occupants were a dozen vigiles, and a carnifex or torturer, who stood beside a table on which, like a set of surgeon’s instruments, was ranged the grisly tool-kit of his trade. In a corner, an array of rods and pincers projected from a glowing brazier.

‘Just tell me all you know,’ said Procopius in pleasant tones. ‘You’ll talk anyway — eventually. So why suffer unnecessarily?’

Both men remaining silent, the prefect nodded to the torturer. The man approached the pair, bearing in gloved hands an iron rod with white-hot tip. This was applied to the backs of the prisoners, these being restrained securely in the grip of burly vigiles. A sickening stench of burning flesh filled the dungeon. Ablabius remained silent, blood dripping down his chin from where he had bitten through his lower lip, but Sergius screamed aloud in agony. ‘No more!’ he sobbed, as the iron was withdrawn. ‘I’ll tell you everything.’

It all came out: the announcement to be made that the emperor was dead; the part to be played by Sergius’ two officer friends in persuading a section of the Palace Guards to back the coup; the information that Belisarius himself supported the conspiracy. All this was confirmed when the two officers in question were arrested and interrogated. (Horatius meanwhile had disappeared — provided with a bag of solidi and instructed to escape.)

Disdaining flight (suggested by his friends) as admission of complicity in the plot, Belisarius indignantly refuted before the Council the ‘evidence’ produced against him. Nevertheless, he was judged guilty and, though his life was spared in consideration of his forty years of loyal service, he was put under house arrest, and his wealth confiscated. However, no hard proof emerging that he was involved in the conspiracy, the following year Belisarius was released and restored to favour. Too late; his heart broken by grief and resentment, the great general — perhaps the greatest Roman general of all — died a few months later.

Shock and sadness over what he perceived as betrayal by his oldest friend changed to remorse and bitter self-recrimination on Justinian’s part as he came at last to see that Belisarius was no traitor, but the innocent victim of malicious rumour.

Revenge, as a Greek philosopher once said, was indeed a dish best eaten cold, reflected Procopius as, lauded and heaped with honours by a grateful emperor, he basked in his new-found reputation as the saviour of the monarchy.

* Civic dignitaries. The plot was investigated in 560, but the case fizzled out for lack of evidence. None of the mud stuck to Peter himself, for we find him in post as Master of Offices throughout that year, and in 562 negotiating a Fifty Year Peace with Persia.

* Horace, Odes. ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.’

THIRTY-TWO

Nothing is lost; destruction is only a name for a change of substance

Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, c. 50 BC

The funeral, as befitted one of the best prefects Constantinople had known, was a grand and solemn service. A moving eulogy, delivered by Paul the Silentiary,* paid tribute to a distinguished public servant who had graced the world of scholarship and letters with his great History of the Wars of Justinian, having himself taken part in many of the campaigns he wrote about so eloquently. Above all, the Roman world owed an incalculable debt to one who, only a few short months before, had, by his expertise and boldness, foiled a monstrous plot to assassinate the emperor. All Constantinople had, it seemed, turned out to pay its last respects to the great Praefectus, as the cortege proceeded from the Praetorium to the Church of Saint Irene, where the body of Procopius was laid to rest.

Returning to the Palace, Justinian retreated to the garden where he and Theodora had first met and which, increasingly, had become a place of refuge where he could be by himself with his deepest thoughts. At last, he was quite alone, the emperor reflected sadly. In turn there had been taken from him: first Theodora, both cornerstone and central pillar of his life; then Belisarius, the friend and faithful servant he had wronged; and now, Procopius — whom, in some ways, he had loved like the son he had never known. Were all things transitory, he wondered, with loss and change the only certainties? All his life he had striven to establish good things that would endure: a Roman Empire that would last forever, serving to implement God’s Plan for the light of civilization and True Faith to shine in time throughout the world; laws that would guide men’s conduct down the ages; great buildings of a design and structure to defy the ravages of time. .

But perhaps it had all been for nothing. Everywhere, blind, uncaring forces seemed to be threatening all he had achieved. Ferocious Lombards were already casting greedy eyes on Italy, ravaged and weakened by twenty years of war; Slavs, Bulgars, and now this new threat from the East, a race more terrible even than the Huns — the Avars — menaced the Danube frontier. His attempts to forge religious unity between East and West — Monophysite and Chalcedonian — had foundered on the rocks of ignorance and stubborn wilfulness. When he passed away (and, at eighty-one, that time could not be distant, Justinian reminded himself), would all that he had worked for fade and vanish also, as ripples from a pebble cast into a pool were briefly seen then disappeared? Was his new-found interest in Aphthartodocetism — the doctrine that held Christ’s body to be incorruptible — merely a reflection of a longing for assurance that some things did not change, were immutable and permanent? Insidiously, a terrifying thought slid into the emperor’s brain. What if the very faith he had striven all his life to understand and serve were nothing more than empty superstition?

In the midst of these gloomy cogitations, Justinian was interrupted by a servitor bearing a book — not an old-fashioned set of papyrus rolls or volumina, but one of the newer kind with parchment paginae.

‘In his Will, Serenity, the prefect stated that he wished you to have the first copy of his final work.’ Bowing, the man handed the codex to Justinian, then departed. Inscribed in gold on the beautiful calf-leather binding was the title — Secret History. Welcoming this distraction from his