And formerly intimates of the Emperor called him Emperor and the Empress, Empress; and the other officials according to the title of their rank. But if anybody addressed either of these two as Emperor or Empress without adding “Your Majesty” or “Your Highness,” or forgot to call himself their slave, he was considered either ignorant or insolent, and was dismissed in disgrace as if he had done some awful crime or committed an unpardonable sin.
And before, only a few were sometimes admitted to the palace; but from the time when these two came to power, the magistrates and everybody else had no trouble in fairly living in the palace. This was because the magistrates of old had administered justice and the laws according to their conscience, and made their decisions while in their own offices, while their subjects, neither seeing nor hearing any injustice, of course had little cause to trouble the Emperor. But these two, taking control of everything to the misfortune of their subjects, forced everyone to come to them and beg like slaves. And almost any day one could see the law courts nearly deserted, while in the hall of the Emperor there was a jostling and pushing crowd that resembled nothing so much as a mob of slaves.
Those who were supposed to be in the imperial favor would stand there all day and most of the night, sleepless and foodless, until they were exhausted; and this is what their presumed good fortune got them. And those who were free of all this sort of thing, asked each other what would become of the prosperity of the Romans. For some were sure it was already in the hands of the barbarians, and others said the Emperor had hidden it away in his various dwelling places. But only when Justinian, be he man or King of the Devils, shall have departed this life, shall they who then happen to survive him, discover the truth.
Endnotes
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Belisarius, according to one learned guess, is a Latin transliteration of the Slavonic “Beli-Tsar,” or “White Prince.” Procopius elsewhere says Belisarius came from Germania, a village “on the border of Thrace and Illyria.” Thus both the Germans and the Hungarians have been able to claim this general as an early hero of their race. ↩
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Silverius’s later destruction seems to have been overlooked by the impetuous historian. ↩
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John of Cappadocia, pretorian prefect, was highly unpopular because of his extreme cruelties, but Justinian refused to remove him from an office he made so financially successful. Discovering he was plotting to make the Emperor distrustful of her, Theodora had Belisarius’s wife, Antonina, lure John into a nocturnal assignation “to discuss a rebellion.” An ambuscade of the Empress’s guards nearly captured the prefect; he escaped with his life, but was permanently disgraced and became a priest. ↩
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Constantine. An officer under Belisarius. ↩
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Presidius, a loyal Italian, was despoiled of two jewelled daggers by Constantine, then military governor of Spoleto. Presidius complained to Belisarius. In a resulting dispute between the general and his subordinate, Constantine drew his sword against his commander. This act of mutiny resulted in his being put to death at the general’s command. ↩
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Photius. Son of Antonina by a former marriage. ↩
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Centenary. One centenary equaled one hundred pounds of gold. ↩
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Chosroes. King of Persia, sometimes called Nushirvan the Just. ↩
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Lazica. Country of the Lazi on the isthmus between the Euxine (Black) and the Caspian Seas; also known anciently as Colchis, the fabled land of Medea and the Golden Fleece. ↩
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Theodosius’s death. Gibbon nicely prefers a more romantic end than the Greek allows: “Theodosius expired in the first fatigues of an amorous interview”! ↩
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Gelimer. Vandal King of Africa. ↩
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Vitiges. Visigoth King of Italy. ↩
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Anastasius. Nephew of Theodora. The Greek word usually means “daughter’s son” only, while the same noun with a feminine ending means “daughter’s daughter” but sometimes “niece.” Gibbon argues that Theodora according to other records had no grandson, and that in any case he could not have reached the age of puberty at this time. Furthermore, if Theodora killed a natural son on his coming to court, so that Justinian would not know of him, it is unlikely she would acknowledge the second fruit of her early misdeeds (her only issue by the Emperor, a girl, died soon after birth). The translation “nephew,” since it often carries a possible romantic connotation, seems the most diplomatic escape from the indicated problem. ↩
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Antonina sixty years old. Gibbon would like, by “a forced but more polite construction,” to make Antonina’s age refer to the moment when Procopius is writing. This chronology, he thinks, “would be compatible with the manhood of Photius in 536.” I suspect that Gibbon’s emendation is historically preferable, and that Procopius’s statement as I have translated it was a tempting sarcasm which his conscience would have corrected in the later revision, had he lived to make it. ↩
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Theodora’s fear of death. She suffered from cancer, which presently proved fatal. ↩
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Belisarius’s end. A picturesque but discredited later fable tells how the ungrateful Justinian finally accused Belisarius of a conspiracy against his life, stripped him of his possessions and put out his eyes, so that he was forced to beg in the streets, “Give a penny to Belisarius the general!” ↩
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Solomon. Known as “the beardless general”: an accidental eunuch, who on Belisarius’s recall from Africa, was by him entrusted with the command of that province, and had proved a capable successor. Another eunuch, Narses, similarly reached a merited military command for a time of the armies in
