[36] Such, then, were the calamities which fell upon all mankind during the reign of the demon who had become incarnate in Justinian, while he himself, as having become Emperor, provided the causes of them. And I shall shew, further, how many evils he did to men by means of a hidden power and of a demoniacal nature. [37] For while this man was administering the nation’s affairs, many other calamities chanced to befall, which some insisted came about through the aforementioned presence of this evil demon and through his contriving, while others said that the Deity, detesting his works, turned away from the Roman Empire and gave place to the abominable demons for the bringing of these things to pass in this fashion. [38] Thus the Scirtus River, by overflowing Edessa, became the author of countless calamities to the people of that region, as will be written by me in a following Book. [39] The Nile also rose as usual but did not recede at the proper time, and thus caused serious loss on the part of some of the inhabitants, as has been told by me previously. [40] And the Cydnus River rose so as to surround practically the whole of Tarsus, and after flooding it for many days only subsided after it had done irreparable damage to it. [41] And earthquakes destroyed Antioch, the first city of the East, and Seleucia which is close to it, as well as the most notable city in Cilicia, Anazarbus. [41] And the number of persons who perished along with these cities who would be able to compute? And one might add to the list Ibora and also Amasia, which chanced to be the first city in Pontus, also Polybotus in Phrygia, and the city which the Pisidians call Philomede, and Lychnidus in Epirus, and Corinth, all of which cities have from ancient times been most populous. [43] For it befell all these cities during this period to be overthrown by earthquakes and the inhabitants to be practically all destroyed with them. [44] And afterwards came the plague as well, mentioned by me before, which carried off about one-half of the surviving population.
[45] Such was the destruction of life which took place, first when Justinian was administering the Roman State as Regent, and later when he held the imperial office.
XIX
I shall now proceed to tell how he robbed the State of quite all its monies, first, however, telling about the vision of a dream which one of the notables chanced to see at the beginning of the reign of Justinus. [2] He said, namely, that in the dream it seemed to him that he was standing somewhere in Byzantium on the shore of the sea which is opposite Chalcedon, and that he saw this man standing in the middle of the strait there. [3] And first he drank up all the water of the sea, so that he had the impression thereafter that the man was standing on dry land, since the water no longer filled the strait at this point, but afterwards other water appeared there that was saturated with much filth and rubbish and welled up from sewer-outlets which are on either side of the strait, and the man immediately drank even this too, and again laid the tract of the strait bare.
[4] Such were the things revealed by the vision of the dream. Now this Justinian, when his uncle Justinus took over the Empire, did find the Government well supplied with public money. [5] For Anastasius had been both the most provident and the most prudent administrator of all Emperors, and fearing, as actually happened, lest his future successor to the throne, finding himself short of funds, might perhaps take to plundering his subjects — he had filled all the treasuries to overflowing with gold before he completed the term of his life. [6] All this money Justinian dissipated with all speed, partly in senseless buildings on the sea, and partly by his kindness to the barbarians; and yet one would have supposed that even for an Emperor who was going to be extremely prodigal these funds would last for a hundred years. [7] For those who were in charge of all the treasures and treasuries and all the other imperial monies declared that Anastasius, after his reign over the Romans of more than twenty-seven years, left behind him in the Treasury three thousand two hundred centenaria of gold. [8] But during the nine years of the reign of Justinus, while this Justinian was inflicting the evils of confusion and disorder upon the Government, they say that four thousand centenaria were brought into the Treasury by illegal means, and that of all this not a morsel was left, but that even while Justinus was still living it had been squandered by this man in the manner described by me in an earlier passage. [9] For as to the amounts which, during all the time he was in power, he succeeded in wrongfully appropriating to himself and then spending, there is no means by which any man could give a reckoning or a calculation or an enumeration of them. [10] For like an everflowing river, while each day he plundered and pillaged his subjects, yet the inflow all streamed straight on to the barbarians, to whom he would make a present of it.
[11] No sooner had he thus disposed of the public wealth than he turned his eyes towards his subjects, and he straightway robbed great numbers of them of their estates, which he seized with high-handed and unjustified violence, haling to court, for crimes that never happened, men both in Byzantium and in every other city who were reputed to be in prosperous circumstances, charging some with belief in polytheism, others with adherence to some perverse sect among the Christians, or with sodomy, or with having amours with holy women, or with other kinds of forbidden intercourse, or with fomenting revolt, or with predilection for the Green Faction, or with insult to himself, or charging crimes of any other name whatsoever, or by his own arbitrary act making himself the heir of deceased persons or, if it should so happen, of the living even, alleging that he had been adopted by them. [12] Such were the most august of his actions. As to the manner in which he so managed the insurrection which arose against him, the one which they called “Nika,” that he immediately became heir of all members of the Senate, and also how, before the insurrection, he had stolen the property of no small number of them, taking them individually and one at a time, has already been set forth by me in a recent chapter.
[13] And he never ceased pouring out great gifts of money to all the barbarians, both those of the East and those of the West and those to the North and to the South, as far as the inhabitants of Britain — in fact all the nations of the inhabited world, even those of whom we had never so much as heard before, but the name of whose race we learned only when we first saw them. [14] For they, of their own accord, on learning the nature of the man, kept streaming from all the earth into Byzantium in order to get to him. [15] And he, with no hesitation, but overjoyed at this situation, and thinking it a stroke of good luck to be bailing out the wealth of the Romans and flinging it to barbarians or, for that matter, to the surging waves of the sea, day by day kept sending them away, one after the other, with bulging purses. [16] In this way the barbarians as a whole came to be altogether the owners of the wealth of the Romans, either by having received the money as a present from the Emperor or by plundering the Roman domain, or by selling back their prisoners of war, or by auctioning off an armistice, and thus the vision of the dream which I have just mentioned worked out to this result for the man who beheld it. [17] However, Justinian succeeded in devising still other ways of exacting booty from his subjects, ways which will be described directly, in so far as I may be able to do so, by which he succeeded completely, not all at once, but little by little, in plundering the property of all men.
XX
First of all, as a general thing he appointed over the people in Byzantium a Prefect, who, while splitting the annual revenue with those who controlled the markets, planned to give them authority to sell their merchandise at whatever price they wanted. [2] And the result for the people of the city was that, although they had to pay a threefold price for the provisions they bought, yet they had no one at all to whom they could protest on account of this. [3] And great harm arose from this business. For since the Treasury received a share of this tax, the official in charge of these matters was eager to use this means of enriching himself. [4] And next, the servants of the official who had undertaken this shameful service, and those who controlled the markets, seizing upon the licence to disregard the law, treated outrageously those who were obliged to buy at that time, not only collecting the prices many times over, as
it has been reported, but also contriving certain unheard-of deceptions in the goods offered for sale.
[5] In the second place, he set up a great number of what are called “monopolies,” and sold the welfare of his subjects to those who wanted to operate these abominations, and thus he, on the one hand, carried off a price for the transaction, and to those, on the other hand, who had contracted with him he gave the privilege of managing their business as they wished. [6] And he applied this same vicious method, without any concealment, to all the other magistracies. For since the Emperor always derived some small share from the peculations of the magistrates, for this reason these, and also those in charge of each function, kept plundering more fearlessly those who fell into their clutches. [7] And just as if the offices which had long been established did not suffice him for this purpose, he invented two additional magistracies to have charge of the State, although before that time the Prefect of the City was wont to deal with all the complaints. [8] But to the end that the sycophants might be ever more numerous and that he might maltreat much more expeditiously the persons of citizens who had done no wrong, he decided to institute these new offices. [9] And to one of the two he gave jurisdiction over thieves, as he pretended, giving it the name of “Praetor of the Plebs”; and to the other office he assigned the province of punishing those who were habitually practising sodomy and those who had such intercourse with women as was prohibited by law, and any who did not worship the Deity in the orthodox way, giving the name of “Quaesitor” to this magistrate. [10] Now the Praetor, if he found among the peculations any of great worth, would deliver these monies to the Emperor, saying that the owners of it were nowhere to be found. [11] Thus the Emperor was always able to get a share of the most valuable plunder. And the one who was called Quaesitor, when he got under his power those who had fallen foul of him, would deliver to the Emperor whatever he wished to give up, while he himself would become rich none the less, in defiance of all law, on the property of other men. [12] For the subordinates of these officials would neither bring forward accusers nor submit witnesses of what had been done, but throughout this whole period the unfortunates who fell in their way continued, without having been accused or convicted, and with the greatest secrecy, to be murdered as well as robbed of their money.
[13] And later this monster commanded these magistrates and the Prefect of the City to take cognizance of all accusations alike, bidding them vie with one another to see which of them would be able to destroy the largest number of men and with the greatest speed. [14] And they say that one of them straightway asked him, if anyone should at any time slander the three of them, which one of them should have the jurisdiction in the case; whereupon the Emperor retorting, said: “Whichever one of you gets ahead of the others.” [15] Furthermore, he handled the office called the Quaestorship in unseemly fashion — an office which practically all previous Emperors had maintained with exceptional care, to the end that those who administered this office should be men of wide experience and, especially, skilled in matters involving the laws and also conspicuously incorruptible in money matters, on the ground that they could not fail to be most harmful to the State if those who held this office should either be handicapped by any inexperience or give rein to avarice. [16] But this Emperor first of all appointed to this office Tribonianus, whose practices have been sufficiently described in the previous Books. [17] And when Tribonianus departed from among men, Justinian confiscated a portion of his property, although he was survived by a son and a large number of grandchildren when the final day of his life arrived; and he appointed Junilus, a Libyan, to this office, a man who had not even a hearsay acquaintance with the law, since he was not even one of the orators; and while he did understand Latin, yet, as far as Greek was concerned, he had neither attended an elementary school, nor was he able to pronounce the language itself in the Greek manner (indeed, on many occasions when he tried hard to speak a Greek word, he won the ridicule of his assistants); he was, furthermore, extraordinarily fond of shameful gain, as evidenced by the fact that he experienced no shame at all when he put up public sale documents belonging to the Emperor. [18] And for one stater he never hesitated to extend his hand to those he met. [19] And for a space of no less than seven years the State was made ridiculous in this way. [20] And after Junilus came to the end of his life, he appointed to this office Constantinus, a man who, while not unacquainted with the law, was very young and as yet had no experience of the keen struggles of the court-room, and withal was the most thieving and the most boastful of all men. [21] This man had come to be very close to Justinian and one of his dearest friends; for this Emperor never hesitated to use him as his agent in both stealing and deciding cases at law. [22] Consequently Constantinus amassed great sums of money in a short time, and he assumed a sort of superhuman pomposity, treading the air and contemplating all men with contempt; and if any were willing to hand out large sums of money to him, they would deposit this in the hands of some of his most faithful retainers, and thus succeed in carrying through the schemes on which they had set their hearts. [23] But to meet the man personally or to confer with him was quite impossible for any man at all, except while he was racing to the Emperor or leaving his presence, not at a walk, to be sure, but with great haste and speed, calculated to prevent those he met from inflicting upon him any ungainful business.
XXI
Thus were these matters handled by this Emperor. And by the Praetorian Prefect upward of thirty centenaria were collected each year in addition to the public taxes. [2] To these he gave the name “air-tax,” to suggest, I presume, that this did not happen to be any regular or customary tax, but that he always got it by a stroke of luck, as though it came of itself out of the air, though in reality this sort of thing should be called villainy on his part. [3] Under the shield of this name those who successively held this office kept up their brigandage towards their subjects with ever-increasing fearlessness. [4] And though they claimed to be delivering this money to the Emperor, they, on their part, found no difficulty in appropriating imperial wealth to themselves. [5] But Justinian saw fit to take note of none of these things, watching for his opportunity with the idea that, as soon as ever they should appropriate some huge piece of wealth, bringing against them some accusation or other which would give no room for excuses, he would thus be able to seize their property all at once. Indeed, this is exactly what he did to John the Cappadocian. [6] Now every single man who held this office during this period suddenly became wealthy beyond measure, with only two exceptions, namely Phocas — whom I have mentioned in an earlier Book as being a man who shewed himself a most scrupulous respecter of justice; for this man remained clear of any gain whatsoever while in that office — and Bassus, who assumed the office at a later time. [7] Yet neither one of these two succeeded in holding the position a year, but, on the ground that they were useless and altogether alien to the spirit of the times, they were relieved of their office within some few months. [8] But in order that my account may not be interminable, through my relating each separate thing, I might say that the same intrigues were being carried out in all the other magistracies in Byzantium.
[9] In all parts of the Roman Empire, however, Justinian’s method was as follows. Picking out the basest men, he would sell to them at a great price the offices that were to be corrupted by them; [10] for no man of decency or any degree of intelligence would think for a moment of paying out his own money in order to buy the privilege of plundering those who had done no wrong. [11] Then, after collecting this money from those who were making the bargain with him, he would confer upon them authority to treat their subjects in any way they pleased. [12] As a result of this, they were destined, after ruining all the districts under their jurisdiction, along with their entire population, to be very rich themselves from that time on. [13] These men, then, borrowed from the bank at a staggering rate of interest the amount of the prices they had paid for the cities, paid it to the man who had made the sale, and then, as soon as they
reached their cities, proceeded to inflict upon their subjects every form of misery, having no concern for anything else than how they might meet their obligations to their creditors and themselves be rated thenceforth among the most wealthy, seeing that this business involved neither danger nor disgrace for them, but actually conferred upon them a certain amount of glory, in proportion to the number of those falling into their clutches whom they were able without any justification to kill and to plunder. [14] For the titles of “murderer” and “brigand” came to be regarded by them as equivalent to “energetic”! [15] All these office-holders, however, whom Justinian observed to be abounding in wealth, he bagged on trumped-up charges and straightway wrested from them absolutely all their fortunes.
[16] But later he promulgated a law that all who sought the offices should take an oath that in very truth they would themselves be innocent of all theft, and that they would neither give nor take anything for the sake of the office. [17] And he laid upon them all the curses which have been mentioned by men of most ancient times, in case anyone should depart from the written terms. [18] Yet when the law had been in force not yet a year, he himself, disregarding the written terms and the curses and the disgrace which would ensue, proceeded more fearlessly than before to negotiate the prices of the offices, not in secret, but in the public square of the market-place. [19] And those who purchased the offices proceeded, though under oath, to pillage everything still more than before.
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