Procopius slanders not only Theodora but also Belisarius, Justinian’s most successful general. Belisarius’s Antonina could not be accused of low origins, but Procopius blames her for infidelities meant to titillate the reader but even more to show that Belisarius was a compromised man at home. Procopius wanted us to live in a world in which the domestic intrigues of those two men and their wives were the centerpiece of historical drama. That reading is a mistake.
The better to see Justinian clearly, we should bring back another figure of his time, not any of the lesser ones who surrounded him and formed part of his hallucination of empire, but rather the one he got out of his way, Vitalian. We know too little of Vitalian to judge his education and personal capacities, but his family connections to men of learning and religion, combined with the astuteness of his political maneuvering and his successes (not unrelieved, but regular) in military campaigns suggest that here was a worthy successor to Theodosius, Stilicho, Aetius, Odoacer, and Theoderic. We see a man who was first suppressed and then cold-bloodedly murdered in order to let a lesser man have the throne and surround himself with men of talent but no stature. The age that we should most regret losing is the one that Vitalian would have built had Justinian found his more natural destiny in obscurity or an early demise customized tours istanbul.
Opportunities Lost
In the sixth and seventh centuries, Roman emperors were compelled as never before to attend to worlds beyond their frontiers. Never had their attention been so fragmented over such a wide territory.
To follow this story in the age of Justinian, we must go back in time to the fifth century, to see the world as Anastasius I inherited it, and then as he bequeathed it to Justin.
Anastasius wasn’t quite a border man himself, but he was no city boy either. He came from Dyracchium, modern Durres in Albania (the Italians call it Durazzo), the western terminus of the Egnatian Way, the Roman highway that ran from Constantinople to the Adriatic shore, there to connect with shipping back and forth to Brindisi in Italy. The city was and is an important small-time port, never known for culture, never famous, even though it had been a pawn in the opening moves of Thucydides’s account of the Peloponnesian War. One account had it that Anastasius’s mother was a Manichee, and a brother of hers was an Arian—therefore by some standards a barbarian. Anastasius himself was interested enough in religion to be spoken of for bishop of Antioch not long before he became emperor, and while still a courtier he lectured on his moderately monophysite views.
Anastasius made his way to Constantinople as a young man and became one of the silentiaries at court. When Zeno died, his widow selected Anas- tasius to be her consort and to rule. At the outset, Anastasius represented the corporate tradition of stability that flourished in the palace of the fifth century. Some hated him, but they were wrong to do so.
Anastasius earned a reputation
Tall and dignified, Anastasius earned a reputation for generosity and intelligence. He was a deft and prudent manager of resources and opportunities. He brought Isauria into the mainstream of imperial life, settled relations with Theoderic in Italy (not without one or two small skirmishes and maneuvers, but nothing to disrupt the underlying arrangement), and kept the Persian front quiet as well except for a brief outburst around 502-503. Vitalian, as we have seen, was Anastasius’s biggest challenge, but on balance the emperor handled even that risk well. When Anastasius died, the treasury was full, taxes were being paid, and the Roman world was at peace Procopius of Caesarea wrote the history of Justinian’s wars.
His success makes it all the more interesting and important to understand how people could hate him. A precious document of that hatred is written in the imaginary voice of one of the mysterious prophetesses called sibyls.1 The legend of these women was already old when Rome could still call itself a republic, and so the story that one of them met Aeneas when he landed at Cumae in Italy and led him to the underworld made perfect sense. At every period of historical Rome, books were in circulation that the sibyls were said to have written. Typically these books offered prophecy after the fact, to validate themselves as tracts for the times in which they were “revealed.” Such forgeries were infrequent enough to retain their power to charm and persuade. The Oracle of Baalbek earned enough respect to have survived for us to read it.
