by Ross Laidlaw
In telling the story I have, wherever possible (and allowing for a modicum of artistic licence), stuck to the known facts, only giving rein to my imagination where lacunae in the records permitted me to do so. For example, we don’t know if Justinian was personally involved in the Dhu-Nuwas campaign, but — as (theoretical) commander of the eastern army — he was certainly in a position to be so. Again, my making Procopius an agent provocateur dedicated to destabilizing Belisarius, although fictitious, is entirely consistent with his views about the general, plus his location alongside Belisarius in various places during the campaigns in Africa and Italy, as well as in Constantinople when he was prefect of that city.
APPENDIX I
THE ETHNIC AND LINGUISTIC BACKGROUND OF JUSTIN AND JUSTINIAN
Historians have tended, perhaps too uncritically, to accept Procopius’ assertion that Justin and his nephew Justinian were of Thracian stock. I would suggest that this needs some re-examination.
Gibbon points out that Justinian’s original name, and that of his father — Uprauda (Upright) and Ystock (Stock) respectively — were Gothic; evidence, surely, that their owners were also Gothic. Settler-groups of Goths (a Germanic tribe), known as ‘Moeso-Goths’, had been established in the northern parts of the Eastern Empire long before the great Gothic migration across the Danube in 376. (It was for his countrymen living in the East Roman province of Moesia Secunda that Ulfila translated the Bible into Gothic c. 350-60.) Justinian’s and his father’s home village, Tauresium, could well have been such a community (especially considering the pair’s likely Gothic origins), a Gothic enclave within the Latin-speaking province of Dardania. As Justinian’s uncle, Justin, hailed from Bederiana (the district in which Tauresium was located) and very possibly from Tauresium itself, he too could well have been of Gothic, rather than Thracian, stock. Also, I strongly suspect that Justin was not his original name. (‘Justinus’ is an eminently appropriate appellation for a Roman emperor; but for a peasant?* It’s as though Thomas Hardy had named his yeoman character, Gabriel Oak, ‘Marmaduke’ Oak!) Hence my borrowed, and Gothic, name for him — ‘Roderic’. I suggest that Justin, and later his nephew Justinian, would have first arrived in Constantinople speaking, in addition to their mother-tongue of Gothic, basic Latin, but no Greek.
I have suggested that Justinian had slave progenitors. In his Anekdota, Procopius affirms that Justinian was descended from slaves and barbarians; but the Secret History is such a biased source, and one so motivated by malice, that its findings have to be regarded with the greatest suspicion. However, in Chambers’ Encyclopaedia of 1888–1892, the article ‘Justinian’ contains a statement that the future emperor was ‘of obscure parentage, and indeed slave-born’, citing, inter alios, the scholars Isambert and G. Body. On the strength of this, I felt justified in making slave parentage a feature of the story. The article also mentions that Justinian’s ‘original name was Uprauda’, confirming Gibbon’s observation.
If (as on the evidence seems likely) Justin’s sister Bigleniza was married to a Goth living in a Gothic community, it is not unreasonable to suppose that she too was of Gothic origin — an inheritance that would be shared by her brother. (Admittedly, ‘Bigleniza’ is not a particularly Gothic-sounding name, which is why I have hinted in the story that she may have had some Thracian blood.) In the end, perhaps, any attempt to define Justin as either a Goth or a Thracian runs into the sand. As Robert Browning says in Justinian and Theodora (in the context of Belisarius’ birth c. 505), ‘Romanized Thracians were much mingled with Gothic stock by this time’ — which allows me, I think, to present Justin in the story as of Gothic rather than Thracian origin.
* The names of his companions on that youthful journey to Constantinople were Zimarch and Dityvist.
APPENDIX II
THE NIKA RIOTS: A TIMETABLE OF EVENTS
The Nika Riots of 532: was there ever, in the whole of history, a more exciting and momentous set-piece? Had the revolt succeeded in toppling Justinian (as it very nearly did), subsequent history might have been very different; at the very least, Istanbul today would be without Hagia Sophia, one of the world’s sublimest buildings, and Justinian’s reform of Roman Law (the basis of the legal systems of many nations at the present day) would never have been finalized, and may well have been passed over and forgotten.
For dramatic reasons, I have gone in for some fairly radical telescoping and condensing regarding some of the incidents connected with the riots. This was to preserve, as far as possible, a sense of the urgency and tempo of the actual events, without, I hope, sacrificing essential historical truth. These changes will become apparent to any reader who cares to compare the relevant pages in the text with the timetable shown below.
While there is broad agreement as to the chronology of events relating to the riots among most authorities, some sources show minor variations between themselves. The following scenario is probably pretty accurate.
Saturday, 3 January to Tuesday, 6 January
Street disturbances (in which some people are killed) resulting from unpopular government policies, broken up by city prefect’s police. Arrests made; some of those detained charged with murder.
Thursday, 8 January
Trials of accused; seven condemned to death.
Sunday, 11 January
Two of those condemned survive bungled execution — a Green and a Blue, given sanctuary in Church of St Lawrence. Prefect posts armed guard around church to prevent rescue.
Monday, 12 January
Tension mounts in the capital; stalemate regarding the two in St Lawrence.
Tuesday, 13 January — the Ides
Hippodrome opens for races. Greens and Blues join forces to demand release of St Lawrence pair, but Justinian refuses to reply; spectators become frustrated and defiant, eventually leaving Hippodrome with shouts of ‘Nika!’ to surround Praetorium. Failing to force the Perfect to listen to their complaints, they break into the building, release prisoners, killing police who try to stop them, then set Praetorium ablaze. Mob then burns Chalke, Hagia Sophia, and other prominent buildings.
Wednesday, 14 January
Races resume in the Hippodrome. Despite Justinian agreeing to the people’s demands for the dismissal of unpopular ministers, the mob becomes more militant. Egged on by members of the upper class (senators et al. who want regime change) it goes to the house of Mundus (one of the three nephews of the emperor Anastasius, and thus a possible candidate for the throne) to try to make him emperor. Finding him absent, they burn down his house in frustration, then threaten the Palace, but the building is protected by German mercenaries under generals Belisarius and Mundus. (The loyalty of the Roman Palace Guard is, at best, uncertain.)
Thursday, 15 January
Belisarius and Mundus sally forth from the Palace to try to suppress the revolt, but can make no headway when the fighting moves to the narrow streets. They withdraw their Germans to the Palace. Stalemate ensues.
Friday and Saturday, 16 and 17 January
Mob goes on rampage, burning down many public buildings. Fearing treachery, Justinian expels from the Palace almost all the courtiers and senators — including Pompeius and Hypatius, the two other nephews of Anastasius! (This, as soon becomes clear, is a bad mistake.)
Sunday, 18 January
Justinian again appears before the people in the Hippodrome. Despite offering a general amnesty and more concessions, he is shouted down by a hostile crowd. As Justinian retreats to the Palace, the mob learns of the expulsion of Pompeius and Hypatius and forces the latter to be crowned as emperor. Reluctant at first, Hypatius accepts the role once he realizes that the mob has senatorial support. In the Palace, Justinian and a small band of faithful followers, convinced that all is lost, prepare to flee. But, perhaps rallied by a stirring exhortation from Theodora (see Appendix III), they change their minds and decide to fight back. After an attempt to ‘spring’ Hypatius from the royal box in the Hippodrome is thwarted by the Palace Guard, Belisarius and Mu
ndus manage to lead their German troops undetected to the Hippodrome, where they launch a surprise attack on the crowd. The ensuing bloodbath and arrest of Hypatius break the spirit of the rebels.
Monday, 19 January
To prevent further rival bids for the purple, Hypatius and Pompeius are executed. This marks the end of the insurrection.
APPENDIX III
DID THEODORA REALLY MAKE HER ‘WINDING SHEET’ SPEECH?
To suggest that Theodora’s famous speech ending with the words, ‘the purple is a glorious winding sheet’, is actually a piece of propaganda fabricated by Procopius, might cause many to react with scepticism, disbelief, disappointment, or even outrage. However, in the interests of objectivity, a writer of historical fiction (with some allowance for artistic licence) has, I think, an obligation to stick broadly to historical truth — even when this risks upsetting cherished beliefs by airing controversial facts or theories. (No doubt many were upset when it emerged that the saintly Thomas Jefferson had sired a child by one of his female slaves.)
In The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, Leslie Brubaker makes a case for Procopius penning Theodora’s speech as a ‘rhetorical set-piece’, rather than as factual reportage — an accepted literary device on the part of ancient authors. (Witness the famous speech that Tacitus puts into the mouth of the Caledonian leader, Galgacus — ‘They create a desert and call it Peace’.) According to Brubaker, the crisis for Justinian resulting from Hypatius’ apparently successful coup was so bad that in order to invest it with maximum dramatic effect, Procopius reverses the natural order, ‘with men quaking like women and a woman speaking like a man’. In this, Procopius was expressing a typically ‘Roman’ attitude (some would say prejudice) regarding gender roles: women were supposed to be gentle, modest, submissive and dedicated to home and family; men were expected to be courageous, strong, just and wise.
To those who like their historical heroes and heroines consistently heroic, I would emphasize that the above is just a theory, developed only very recently. That Theodora herself made the speech has in the past been regarded as ‘kosher’ by almost all historians. To those who prefer their history ‘warts and all’, Brubaker’s argument is reinforced by reference to convincing theories, based on solid research, presented by Elizabeth Fisher and Averil Cameron in the late twentieth century.
The question remains: if not Theodora, then who did galvanize the demoralized little band loyal to Justinian into mounting the operation that ended the Nika revolt?
APPENDIX IV
PROCOPIUS — FIFTH COLUMNIST?
Although Libertas (see Chapter 14 et seq.) is fictional, it is tempting to speculate that a secret resistance movement on similar lines could have existed, and that Procopius might somehow have been involved. Certainly, the time could not have been more ripe. At the time of Nika and its immediate aftermath, Justinian (as hopefully the text makes clear) was extremely unpopular with all classes of society — especially among those of senatorial rank, who alone could provide the leadership, wealth, and organizing know-how necessary to promote change. Men like my character Anicius Julianus, who was suggested by a real person — Anicia Juliana, daughter of the West Roman emperor Olybrius, a member of the immensely rich and powerful Anician family, part of the West Roman diaspora settled in Constantinople, and whose son was one of the senators exiled after the revolt. None of the grievances which had provoked the Nika Riots had been resolved, nor was there any sign that solutions would be forthcoming. In the past, discontent with the rule of tyrants and incompetents had led to the toppling (often by a combination of senior army officers and senators) of emperors such as Nero, Commodus, and Valentinian III.
Incidentally, the Roman Senate (and that includes its East Roman incarnation) has often been portrayed as a toothless tiger, whose only function was to rubber-stamp the diktats of an autocratic emperor. Such a picture is deceptive. For it is a fact of history that rulers who continued to flout the mores of S.P.Q.R. were invariably removed from office — ‘with extreme prejudice’, to use a deliciously bizarre euphemism once favoured by the American Secret Service. Even in the dying days of the Western Empire, the Senate still had enough clout to have the emperor Avitus ‘disposed of’ for adopting too accommodating a stance towards the barbarians. Though the power of the Senate as an institution was severely weakened by Justinian, the class from which its ranks were drawn continued to be an influential sector of society, one which any emperor would be foolish to ignore or alienate.
Allowing, for the sake of argument, that an organization on the lines of Libertas could have existed (and, all things considered, it would perhaps be surprising if some form of underground resistance against Justinian had not arisen after Nika), then Procopius would have fitted perfectly into such a scenario — as spy, double agent, or fifth columnist. Cast in that sort of role, he becomes an absolute gift to the writer of historical fiction. We know that he detested and despised Justinian. (‘Without any hesitation he shattered the laws when money was in sight’, is one of the milder aspersions against the emperor in Secret History.) Given the opportunity to do him harm, it is hard to believe that he would have refrained from doing so. And an organization such as Libertas would have provided just such an opportunity, with Procopius (as part of Belisarius’ staff* in the African and Italian campaigns, and later as Prefect of Constantinople) ideally placed to cause maximum disruption. How else to account for the following?
i) Who started the drip-drip of malicious rumours about Belisarius, causing Justinian to harbour suspicions about his general regarding his conduct during the Vandal campaign,** and later, leading to his recall from Italy?
ii) Who almost persuaded the Huns to switch sides to the Vandals in Africa?
iii) Who supplied Totila with secret information enabling him to generate a resurgence of Gothic power in Italy?
iv) Who fomented mutiny in Africa, following its reconquest?
v) Who spread false rumours that Justinian was dead, which led to a constitutional crisis?
vi) Who was behind the hatching of a plot to assassinate Justinian?
None of the above directly points the finger at Procopius. Taken collectively however, they could be significant. On every occasion connected with these queries, Procopius — in an inversion of T.S. Eliot’s famous line about McAvity — was there. Which, if nothing else, does perhaps serve to ‘put him in the frame’.
* Procopius had little respect for Belisarius (as evidenced in Secret History, where he refers to the general’s ‘contemptible conduct’) so presumably wouldn’t have scrupled to betray him.
** ‘. . private despatches maliciously affirmed that the conqueror of Africa. . conspired to seat himself on the throne of the Vandals. . Justinian listened with too patient an ear; and his silence was the result of jealousy rather than of confidence.’ (Gibbon.)
NOTES
Prologue
Ammianus Marcellinus
This Roman officer-turned-historian paints a marvellously colourful and detailed picture of the late Roman world in the second half of the fourth century, covering — besides a wealth of fascinating domestic issues such as witchcraft trials and snobbery among the nouveaux riches in Rome — campaigns in Germany, Gaul, Britain and Persia. He ends on a sombre note — the destruction of a huge Roman army by the Goths, at Adrianople in AD 378. Though he could not foresee it, this disaster would precipitate a chain of events that would culminate in the fall of the Western Empire a century later.
this year of the consul Paulus
Normally, two consuls — one from Constantinople, the other from Rome — were chosen each year, the year being named for them. This practice continued even after the fall of the West, Western consuls being nominated by the first two German kings of Italy — Odovacar, then Theoderic — in their capacity as vicegerents of the Eastern emperor, who held the power to ratify or ignore their choice. A less common way of dating events was from the Founding of the City (of Rome, in 753 BC) — Ab Urbe Co
ndita, or A.U.C. Dating from the birth of Christ was only introduced in 527, at the instigation of one Dionysius Exiguus, but was not generally adopted before the age of Charlemagne and King Alfred. Dating for the interim period between the lapsing of consular dates (the office was abolished in 539) and the adoption of the Christian Era c. AD 800, was from the supposed Creation (according to one Julius Africanus) on 1 September, 5,508 years, three months, and twenty-five days before the birth of Christ. (See Gibbon’s note at the end of Chapter 40 of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.)
elephants and cataphracts
Alexander encountered (Indian) elephants in his Persian and Indian campaigns, and elephants (African ones) were famously used by Hannibal against the Romans. For a limited period after the end of the Punic wars, elephants were even employed by late Hellenistic armies, before falling out of fashion. Persia, as Ammianus Marcellinus eloquently testifies, was still using war-elephants in the later fourth century, but seems to have abandoned them by the seventh, as they are nowhere mentioned during the East Roman emperor Heraclius’ war against Persia in AD 622.
Cataphracts, or cataphractarii — heavily armoured cavalry — appear to have been a Persian invention, but were extensively copied by the late Romans. Strictly, the term ‘cataphract’ should apply only when the rider, not his horse, was armoured; clibanarius — literally (and appropriately!) ‘oven man’ — is the correct term when both were armoured. ‘Cataphract’ however, was freely used to describe both types. Cataphracts, despite a superficial resemblance in appearance, were not the ancestors of the European mediaeval knight, although often referred to as such. Knighthood was a strictly feudal development, in which military service was an obligation incurred by a grant of land from a feudal superior.