I now come to the description of the private life and character of
Justinian and Theodora, and of the manner in which they rent the Roman
Empire asunder.
At the time when Leo occupied the imperial throne, three young
husbandmen, of Illyrian birth, named Zimarchus, Ditybistus, and Justin
of Bederiane, in order to escape from their utter poverty at home,
determined to enlist in the army. They made their way to Byzantium on
foot, with knapsacks of goat's-hair on their shoulders, containing
nothing but a few biscuits which they had brought from home. On their
arrival they were enrolled in the army, and chosen by the Emperor
amongst the palace guards, being all three very handsome young men.
Afterwards, when Anastasius succeeded to the throne, war broke out
with the Isaurians who had rebelled against him. He sent a considerable
army against them, under the command of John, surnamed “The Hunchback.”
This John arrested Justin for some offence and imprisoned him, and on
the following day would have put him to death, had not a vision which
he beheld in his sleep prevented him. He said that, in his dream, a man
of great stature, and in every way more than human, bade him release
the man whom he had that day cast into prison. When he awoke, he made
light of this vision; and, although he saw again the same vision and
heard the same words on the following night, not even then would he
obey the command. But the vision appeared for the third time, and
threatened him terribly if he did not do what he was commanded, and
warned him that he would thereafter stand in great need of this man and
his family when his wrath should fall upon him. Thus did Justin escape
death.
As time went on, this Justin rose to great power. The Emperor
Anastasius appointed him commander of the palace guard, and when that
prince died, he, by the influence of his position, seized the throne.
He was by this time an old man with one foot in the grave, so utterly
ignorant of letters, that one may say that he did not know the
alphabet—a thing which had never happened before amongst the Romans.
It had been customary for the Emperor to sign the decrees which were
issued by him with his own hand, whereas he neither made decrees, nor
was capable of conducting affairs; but Proclus, who acted as his
quaestor and colleague, arranged everything at his own pleasure.
However, in order that the Emperor's signature might appear in public
documents, his officers invented the following device. They had the
shapes of four Latin letters cut in a thin piece of wood, and then,
having dipped the pen in the imperial ink used by the Emperors in
writing, they put it in the Emperor's hand, and laying the piece of
wood on the paper to be signed, they guided the Emperor's hand and pen
round the outline of the four letters, making it follow all the
convolutions cut in the wood, and then retired with the result as the
Emperor's signature. This was how the affairs of the Empire were
managed under Justin. His wife was named Lupicina; she was a slave and
a barbarian, whom he had bought for his mistress, and at the close of
his life she ascended the throne with him. Justin was not strong enough
to do his subjects either good or harm; he was utterly simple, a very
poor speaker, and a complete boor. Justinian was his sister's son, who,
when quite a young man, practically governed the State, and brought
more woe upon the Romans than anyone we have ever heard of before. He
was ever ready to commit unrighteous murders and rob men of their
estates, and thought nothing of making away with tens of thousands of
men who had given him no cause for doing so. He had no respect for
established institutions, but loved innovations in everything, and was,
in short, the greatest destroyer of all the best of his country's
institutions. As for the plague, of which I have made mention in the
former books of my history, although it ravaged the whole earth, yet as
many men escaped it as perished by it, some of them never taking the
contagion, and others recovering from it. But no human being in all the
Roman Empire could escape from this man, for he was like some second
plague sent down from heaven to prey upon the whole human race, which
left no man untouched. Some he slew without cause, others he reduced to
a struggle with poverty, so that their case was more piteous than that
of the dead, and they prayed daily to be relieved from their misery
even by the most cruel death, while he robbed others of their lives and
their property at the same time.
Not content with ruining the Roman Empire, he carried out the
conquest of Italy and Africa, merely that he might treat them in the
same way, and destroy the inhabitants, together with those who were
already his subjects. He had not been in authority ten days before he
put to death Amantius, the chief of the palace eunuchs, with several
others. He had no complaint whatever against the man beyond that he had
said something offensive about John the archbishop of the city. Owing
to this, he became the most dreaded of all men in the world.
Immediately afterwards he sent for the usurper Vitalianus, to whom
he had given the most solemn pledges for his safety, and had partaken
of the Christian sacrament with him. Shortly afterwards, he conceived
some suspicion of him, and made away with him and his companions in the
palace, for no reason whatever, thus showing that he scorned to observe
even the most solemn oaths.