The Secret History/Part 4

by Procopius

Chapter XVI

At the time when Amalasuntha, desiring to leave the company of the Goths, decided to transform her life and to take the road to Byzantium, as has been stated in the previous narrative, Theodora, considering that the woman was of noble birth and a queen, and very comely to look upon and exceedingly quick at contriving ways and means for whatever she wanted, but feeling suspicious of her magnificent bearing and exceptionally virile manner, and at the same time fearing the fickleness of her husband Justinian, expressed her jealousy in no trivial way, but she schemed to lie in wait for the woman even unto her death. Straightway, then, she persuaded her husband to send Peter, unaccompanied by others, to be his ambassador to Italy. And as he was setting out, the Emperor gave him such instructions as have been set forth in the appropriate passage, where, however, it was impossible for me, through fear of the Empress, to reveal the truth of what took place. She herself, however, gave him one command only, namely, to put the woman out of the world as quickly as possible, causing the man to be carried away by the hope of great rewards if he should execute her commands. So as soon as he arrived in Italy — and indeed man's nature knows not how to proceed in a hesitant, shrinking way to a foul murder when some office, perhaps, or a large sum of money is to be hoped for — he persuaded Theodatus, by what kind of exhortation I do not know, to destroy Amalasuntha. And as a reward for this he attained the rank of Magister, and acquired great power and a hatred surpassed by none.

Such, then, was the end of Amalasuntha. But Justinian had a certain secretary, Priscus by name, a thorough villain and a blusterer, and very well qualified by character to satisfy his master, but very well disposed towards Justinian and believing that he enjoyed a similar goodwill on his part. Consequently, by unjust means, he very quickly became possessed of a large fortune. But Theodora slandered the man to her husband, alleging that he bore himself with supercilious pride and was always trying to oppose her. And though at first she met with no success, she not much later, in the middle of the winter, put the man aboard ship and sent him away to a destination which the Empress had selected, and she caused his head to be shaved and compelled him quite against his will to be a priest. Justinian himself meanwhile gave the impression that he knew nothing of what was going on, and he made no investigation as to where in the world Priscus was nor did the man enter his thoughts thereafter, but he sat in silence as if overcome by lethargy, not forgetting, however, to plunder all the small remainder of the man's fortune. And at one time a suspicion arose that Theodora was smitten with love of one of the domestics, Areobindus by name, a man of barbarian lineage but withal handsome and young, whom she herself had, as it chanced, appointed to be steward; so she, wishing to combat the charge, though they say that she did love the man desperately, decided for the moment to maltreat him most cruelly for no real cause, and after we knew nothing at all about the man, nor has anyone seen him to this day. For if it was her wish to conceal anything that was being done, that thing remained unspoken of and unmentioned by all, and it was thenceforth not permitted either for any man who had knowledge of the matter to report the fact to any of his kinsmen or for anyone who wished to learn the truth about him to make enquiry, even though he were very curious. For since there have been human beings there has never been such fear of any tyrant, for there was not even a possibility of concealment for one who had given offence. For a throng of spies kept reporting to her what was said and done both in the market-place and in the homes of the people. When, therefore, she did not wish the offender's punishment to be published abroad, she used to take the following course. She would summon the man, if he chanced to be one of the notables, and secretly would put him in the charge of one of her ministers and command him secretly to convey the man to the uttermost parts of the Roman Empire. So he at an unseasonable hour of the night would put the man on board a ship, seeing that he was thoroughly bundled up and shackled, and also go on board with him, and he very stealthily delivered him over, at the point which had been indicated by the woman, to the man qualified for this service; then he departed after directing the man to guard the prisoner as securely as possible and forbidding him to speak of the matter to anyone until either the Empress should take pity on the poor wretch, or, after suffering for years a lingering death by reason of the miseries of his existence in that place and utterly wasting away, he should at last end his days.

And she also conceived an anger against a certain Vasianus, a youthful member of the Green Faction and not without distinction, for having covered her with abuse. For this each Vasianus (for he had not failed to hear of this anger) fled to the Church of the Archangel. And she immediately set upon him the official in charge of the people, commanding him to make no point of his abuse of her, but laying against him the charge of sodomy. And the official removed the man from the sanctuary and inflicted a certain intolerable punishment upon him. And the populace, upon seeing a free-born man involved in such dire misfortunes, were all straightway filled with anguish at the calamity and in lamentation raised their cries to the heavens, seeking to intercede for the youth. She, however, only punished him even more, and cutting off his private parts destroyed him without a trial and confiscated his property to the Treasury. Thus whenever this hussy became excited, no sanctuary proved secure nor did any legal prohibition hold, nor could the supplication of a whole city, as it were, as it was clearly shown, avail to rescue the offender, nor could anything else whatever stand in her way.

And being angry with a certain Diogenes, as being a Green, a man who was witty and liked by all, even by the Emperor himself, she nevertheless was determined to bring against him the slanderous charge of male intercourse. Consequently she persuaded two of his own domestics to act as both accusers and witnesses and set them upon their owner. And when he was first examined, not secretly and with the great privacy which is usually observed, but in a public trial, with many judges appointed who were men of note, all on account of the reputation of Diogenes, since it did not seem to the judges, as they sought to get at the exact truth, that the statements of the domestics were of sufficient weight to justify a decision, particularly as they were young boys, she confined Theodore, one of the connections of Diogenes, in the usual cells. There she attacked the man with much cajolery and also with abuse. But since she met with no success, she caused the attendants to wind a leathern strap on the man's head, about his ears, and then ordered them to twist and so to tighten the strap. And Theodore believed that his eyes had jumped out of his head, leaving their proper seats, yet he was unwilling to fabricate any untruth. So finally the judges acquitted Diogenes on the ground that the charge was unsupported by evidence, and the whole city in consequence celebrated a public holiday.

Chapter XVII

Such was the outcome of this affair. But at the beginning of this Book I told all that the Empress did to Belisarius and Photius and Bouzes. And two members of the Blue Faction, Cilicians by birth, with a great tumult set upon Callinicus, Governor of the Second Cilicia, and proceeded to lay violent hands upon him, and they slew the man's groom who stood hard by and was trying to defend his master, while the Governor and the whole populace looked on. And he by process of law brought about the death of the factionists who were found guilty of this and of many other murders, but she, upon learning of this and making a display of the fact that she favoured the Blues, caused him to be impaled for no good reason and while he still held office, on the grave of the murderers. And the Emperor, pretending to weep and lament over the murdered man, sat there groaning, and though he held many threats over those who had performed the deed, he did nothing; yet he by no means declined to plunder the money of the deceased.

But Theodora also concerned herself to devise punishments for sins against the body. Harlots, for instance, to the number of more than five hundred who plied their trade in the midst of the market-place at the rate of three obols — just enough to live on — she gathered together, and sending them over to the opposite mainland she confined them in the Convent of Repentance, as it is called, trying there to compel them to adopt a new manner of life. And some of them threw themselves down from a height at night and thus escaped the unwelcome transformation.

There were two girls in Byzantium who were sisters; they were not only the offspring of a consular father and of three generations of Consuls, but drew their lineage from men who from remote times were of the foremost blood of the whole Senate. These had previously entered into marriage, but it had come about by the death of their husbands that they became widows. And immediately Theodora selected two men — men who were not only of the common herd, but also disgusting fellows — and made it her business to mate them with the women, whom she charged with living unchaste lives. And they, fearing lest this be brought to pass, fled into the Church of Sophia, and coming into the holy baptismal chamber, they seized with their hands the font which is there. But the Empress Theodora inflicted upon them such dire constraint and suffering that in their desire to escape these woes they became eager enough to accept the marriage in place of them. Thus for her no place remained undefiled or inviolate. So these women, against their wills, were united in marriage to men who were beggars and outcasts, much beneath them in standing, although noble suitors were at hand for them. And their mother, who also had become a widow, not daring to groan or to cry out at the calamity, attended the betrothal. But later Theodora, by way of expiating the scandal, decided to console them at the expense of public misfortunes. For she appointed both of the men magistrates. But no comfort came to the girls even so, and woes incurable and unbearable fell from the hands of these men upon practically all their subordinates, as will be told by me in the later Books. For in Theodora there was respect of neither magistrate nor government, nor was anything else the object of her concern, provided only that her will was being accomplished.

Now she had chanced to conceive a child by one of her lovers while she was still on the stage, and being late about discovering her misfortune she did everything to accomplish, in her usual way, an abortion, but she was unsuccessful, by all the means employed, in killing the untimely infant, for by now it lacked but little of its human shape. Consequently, since she met with no success, she gave up trying and was compelled to bear the child. And when the father of the new-born child saw that she was distressed and displeased because after becoming a mother she would no longer be able to go on using her body as she had done, since he rightly suspected that she would destroy the child, he acknowledged the infant by lifting it up in his arms, and, naming it John, since it was a male, he went his way to Arabia, whither he was bound. And when he himself was about to die, and John was now a young lad, his father told him the whole story of the mother. And he, after performing all the customary rites over his father after his death, a little later came to Byzantium and announced the fact to those who had constant access to his mother. And they, supposing that she would not reason otherwise than as a human being, reported to the mother that her son John had come. But the woman, fearing that the matter would become known to her husband, gave orders that the boy should come into her presence. And when he came and she had seen him, she entrusted him to one of her domestics to whom she was always wont to delegate such matters. And by what method the poor wretch was spirited out of the world I cannot say, but no man to this day has been able to see him, even since the death of the Empress.

At that time it came to pass that practically all the women had become corrupt in character. For they sinned against their husbands with complete licence, since such acts brought them no danger or harm, because even those who were found guilty of adultery remained unscathed; for they straightway went to the Empress and turning the tables brought counter-suit against their husbands and haled them before the court though no charges had been made against them. And all the good the husbands got of it was to pay a fine double the wife's dowry, although no charge had been proved against them, and then to be scourged and, usually, led off to prison, and afterwards to look on while the adulteresses preened themselves and more boldly than ever accepted their seducers' embraces. And many of the adulterers actually attained honour from this conduct. Consequently most men thereafter, though outrageously treated by their wives, were very glad to remain silent and escape the scourge, granting their wives complete freedom by allowing them to think that they had not been detected.

This woman claimed the right to administer everything in the State by her own arbitrary judgment. For she controlled the election of the occupants of both the magistracies and the priesthoods, investigating and guarding very persistently against just one thing, namely, that the candidate for the dignity should not be an honourable or good man or one who would be likely to be incompetent to carry out her instructions. And she regulated all marriages with an authority that may be described as grandmotherly. It was then for the first time that men and women gave up entering into a voluntary betrothal looking to marriage; for each man would all of a sudden find that he had a wife — not because she pleased him, as is customary even among the barbarians, but because this was the will of Theodora. Thus women who were being married had precisely the same experience in their turn; for they were compelled to be united with husbands quite against their will. And many a time Theodora even took the bride away from the bridal chamber for no reason at all and left the bridegroom unmarried, merely remarking in a burst of passion that the woman displeased her. And she did this to many men, including Leon, who held the office of Referendarius, and to Saturninus the son of Hermogenes, who had been Magister, in the case of woman to whom they were betrothed. For this Saturninus had an unwedded second cousin to whom he was betrothed, a free-born woman of seemly deportment whom her father Cyrillus had pledged to him, Hermogenes having already departed this life. And after their bridal chamber had already been closed fast upon them, she took the bridegroom into custody and he was led to a second chamber, where, with great wailing and lament, he married the daughter of Chrysomallo. Now this Chrysomallo had long before been a dancer and again a courtesan, but at that time she was living in the Palace with another Chrysomallo and Indaro. For instead of the phallus and the life in the theatre, they were managing their affairs here. And when Saturninus had slept with the girl and found that she had lost her maidenhood, he reported to one of his intimates that he had married a girl who had been "tampered with." And when this remark was brought to Theodora, she commanded the servants to hoist the man aloft, as one does children who go to school, because he was putting on airs and assuming a lofty dignity to which he had no right, and she gave him a drubbing on the back with many blows and told him not to be a foolish babbler.

Now the things which she did to John the Cappadocian have been told in the earlier narrative. These things were done by her to the man in anger, not on account of his offences against the State (and the proof is that later, when men did still worse things to her subjects, she treated no one of them in such a way), but because he was making bold to oppose the woman outright in other matters and especially because he kept slandering her to the Emperor, so that she came very near getting into a state of hostility with her husband. But here, as I have said, I must by all means tell the reasons for her conduct which are absolutely true. And even when she had got him imprisoned in Egypt after he had endured all the sufferings which I have previously described, even thus she did not reach any satiety of punishing the man, but she never ceased searching out false witnesses against him. And four years later she succeeded in finding two members of the Green Faction in Cyzicus who were said to be of those who had risen against the Bishop. And she won over these men with flattering speeches and with threats, with the result that one of them, in terror and at the same time uplifted by hopes, laid the sacrilege of the Bishop's murder at John's door. As for the other man, he refused absolutely to contradict the truth, though he was so racked by the torture that he was even expected to die immediately. Therefore, although she was unable, no matter what means she employed, to destroy John through this subterfuge, she cut off the right hands of these two young men, of the one because he had refused to bear false witness, and of the other in order to prevent her plot from becoming altogether manifest. And though these intrigues were being carried on in the publicity of the market-place, Justinian pretended to know absolutely nothing of what was going on.

Chapter XVIII

And that he was no human being, but, as has been suggested, some manner of demon in human form, one might infer by making an estimate of the magnitude of the ills which he inflicted upon mankind. For it is in the degree by which a man's deeds are surpassingly great that the power of the doer becomes evident. Now to state exactly the number of those who were destroyed by him would never be possible, I think, for anyone so ever, or for God. For one might more quickly, I think, count all grains of sand than the vast number whom this Emperor destroyed. But making an approximate estimate of the extent of territory which has become to be destitute of inhabitants, I should say that a myriad myriad of myriads perished. For in the first place, Libya, which attains to so large dimensions, has been so thoroughly ruined that for the traveller who makes a long journey it is no easy matter, as well as being a noteworthy fact, to meet a human being. And yet the Vandals who recently took up arms there numbered eight myriads, and as for their women and children and slaves, who could guess their number? And as for the Libyans, those who formerly lived in the cities, those who tilled the soil, and those who toiled at the labours of sea — all of which I had the fortune to witness with my own eyes — how could any man estimate the multitude of them? And still more numerous than these were the Moors there, all of whom were in the end destroyed together with their wives and offspring. Many too of the Roman soldiers and of those who had followed them there from Byzantium the earth has covered. So that if one maintains that five hundred myriads of human beings perished in Libya, he would not by any means, I know, be doing justice to the facts. And the reason for this was that immediately after the defeat of the Vandals, Justinian not only did not concern himself with strengthening his dominion over the country, and not only did he not make provision that the safeguarding of its wealth should rest securely in the good-will of its inhabitants, but straightway he summoned Belisarius to return home without the least delay, laying against him an utterly unjustified accusation of tyranny, to the end that thereafter, administering Libya with full licence, he might swallow it up and thus make plunder of the whole of it.

At any rate he immediately sent out assessors of the land and imposed certain most cruel taxes which had not existed before. And he laid hold of the estates, whichever were best. And he excluded the Arians from the sacraments which they observed. Also he was tardy in the payment of his military forces, and in other ways became a grievance to the soldiers. From these causes arose the insurrections which resulted in great destruction. For he never was able to adhere to settled conditions, but he was naturally inclined to make confusion and turmoil everywhere.

And as to Italy, which has not less than three times the area of Libya, it has become everywhere even more destitute of men than Libya. Consequently the estimate of persons likewise destroyed here will be fairly easy. For the cause of what happened in Italy has already been explained by me in an earlier passage. Indeed all the errors which he made in Libya were repeated by him here also. And by adding to the administrative staff the Logothetes, as they are called, he upset and ruined everything immediately. Now the sway of the Goths extended, before this war, from the land of Gaul as far as the boundaries of Dacia, where the city of Sirmium is situated. As for Gaul and Venetia, the Germans held the greater part of them at the time when the Roman army came into Italy. But the Gepaides control Sirmium and the country thereabout, which is all, roughly speaking, completely destitute of human habitation. For some were destroyed by the war, some by disease and famine, the natural concomitants of war. And Illyricum and Thrace in its entirety, comprising the whole expanse of country from the Ionian Gulf to the outskirts of Byzantium, including Greece and the Thracian Chersonese, was overrun practically every year by Huns, Sclaveni and Antae, from the time when Justinian took over the Roman Empire, and they wrought frightful havoc among the inhabitants of that region. For in each invasion more than twenty myriads of Romans, I think, were destroyed or enslaved there, so that a veritable "Scythian wilderness" came to exist everywhere in this land.

Such are the disasters wrought by the wars in Libya and in Europe. The Saracens meantime were overrunning the Romans of the East, from Egypt to the frontiers of Persia, throughout this whole period without interruption, and they accomplished such thorough-going destruction that this entire region came to be very sparsely populated, and it will never be possible, I think, for any human being to discover by enquiry the numbers of those who perished in this way. The Persians under Chosroes four times made inroads into the rest of the Roman domain and dismantled the cities, and as for the people whom they found in the captured cities and in each country district, they slew a part and led some away with them, leaving the land bare of inhabitants wherever they chanced to descend. And ever since the Persian invasion of the land of Colchis, the Colchians and the Lazi and the Romans have continued to be steadily destroyed up to the present day.

Moreover, neither the Persians on their part nor the Saracens nor the Huns nor the race of the Sclaveni nor any other of the barbarians have had the fortune to retire unscathed from Roman soil. For in the course of their inroads, and particularly during the sieges and battles, they fell foul of many obstacles and were destroyed equally with their enemies. For not alone Romans but practically the whole barbarian world as well felt the influence of Justinian's lust for bloodshed. For not only was Chosroes himself likewise vicious in character, but he was also provided by Justinian, as has been stated by me in the appropriate place, with all the motives for waging war. For he did not think it worth while to adapt his activities to the opportune occasions, but he kept doing everything out of season, in times of peace and in periods of truce ever devising, with crafty purpose, occasions of war against his neighbours, and in times of war, on the other hand, growing lax for no good reason and carrying on the preparations for military operations too deliberately, all because of his parsimony, and instead of devoting himself to such things, scanning the heavens and developing a curious interest concerning the nature of God, and neither giving over the war, because of his bloodthirsty and abominable character, nor being, on the other hand, able to get the better of his enemy, because he was prevented by his niggardliness from busying himself with the necessary things. Thus during his reign the whole earth was constantly drenched with human blood shed by both the Romans and practically all the barbarians.

This, then, to state the case in a word, is what came to pass during this period of wars throughout the whole Roman Empire. And when I reckon over the events which took place during the insurrections both in Byzantium and in each several city, I believe that no less slaughter of men came about in this way than in actual warfare. For since justice and impartial chastisement for wrong-doing scarcely existed at all, but of the two Factions one was actually supported by the Emperor, assuredly the other party did not remain quiet either; on the contrary, because one group was being worsted and the other was full of confidence, they constantly had in view desperation and mad recklessness; and sometimes attacking each other in crowds and sometimes fighting in small groups, or even, if it so happened, setting ambuscades one against one, for two-and‑thirty years without a pause they kept wreaking fearful vengeance upon one another, and at the same time they were being put to death by the magistrate, as a rule, who was charged with the control of the populace. But the punishment for their crimes was, for the most part, levelled against the Greens. Furthermore, the punishment of the Samaritans and of those called heretics filled the Roman Empire with slaughter. These things, however, are here mentioned by me merely in summary, inasmuch as they have been sufficiently recorded by me somewhat earlier.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. For it befell all these cities during this period to be overthrown by earthquakes and the inhabitants to be practically all destroyed with them. And afterwards came the plague as well, mentioned by me before, which carried off about one-half of the surviving population.

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.

Chapter 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. For like an ever flowing 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.

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. 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.

p233 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Chapter 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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." 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. But this Emperor first of all appointed to this office Tribonianus, whose practices have been sufficiently described in the previous Books. 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. And for one stater he never hesitated to extend his hand to those he met. And for a space of no less than seven years the State was made ridiculous in this way. 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. 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. 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. 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.