The Age of Justinian: The Circumstances of Imperial Power (Roman Imperial Biographies)

512 Pages·2001·1.38 MB·English

THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN
THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

The Age of Justinian examines the reign of the great emperor Justinian
(527–565) and his wife Theodora, who advanced from the theatre to the
throne. Here we find chronicled the origins of the split between East and
West, the results of which are still with us. The book looks at the social
structure of sixth-century Byzantium, and the neighbours that surrounded
the empire. It also deals with Justinian’s wars, which restored Italy, Africa
and a part of Spain to the empire.

THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

The circumstances of imperial power

J. A. S. Evans
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THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

First published 1996

by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001.

© 1996, 2000 J.A.S. Evans

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 0-203-13303-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-16961-1 (OEB Format)

ISBN 0–415–23726-2 Pbk

ISBN 0–415–02209–6 Hbk

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THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

CONTENTS
Preface ix

Map of Constantinople xi

Map of the Roman Empire xii

Introduction 1

1 THE IMPERIAL ENVIRONMENT 11

The empire which Anastasius left behind 11

The construction of a new capital 16

The New Rome on the Bosporus 23

The people of the empire 41

The imperial office and its ideology 58

Christianity and its discontents 65

The neighbours of the empire 78

2 THE NEW DYNASTS: THEIR EARLY YEARS OF POWER 96

The accession of the new dynasty 96

The Monophysite persecution 105

The Himyarite affair 112

Renewed war with Persia 114

The Nika Revolt 119

3 THE RESTORATION OF THE EMPIRE: THE WARS OF JUSTINIAN 126

The recovery of Africa 126

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The invasion of Italy 136

New battle fronts: revolt in Africa, fresh war in Italy and the Persian offensive 151

542: the plague year 160

Consolidating the conquests: the search for peace 165

4 THE HOME FRONT: DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 183

Theological imbroglio 183

The administration of the empire 192

Social and economic developments 215

Commerce 232

The ‘Outsiders’: Jews, Samaritans, pagans, heretics 240

5 THE FINAL YEARS 253

The last decade 253

The aftermath 263

Conclusion and assessment 269

Notes 273

Sources 306

Bibliography 308

Index 331

PREFACE

Over the long gestation period that produced this book, I enjoyed the
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assistance of a number of institutions and granting agencies, which I want
gratefully to acknowledge. I started work on the Syriac sources in the
Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, supported by a grant from the Social
Sciences and Research Council of Canada. From there I migrated to the
Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies in Washington D.C., where
I encountered the gracious hospitality of Giles Constable, who was
director at that time. My university gave me a year’s administrative leave
in 1993–94 when I retired as head of the Department of Classics, and a
portion of it was spent at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, N.
J. I want to acknowledge the kindness of old and new friends there,
particularly Homer Thompson, Glen Bowersock and the late Alison Frantz,
who introduced me to the architecture of the Byzantine world many years
ago at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. I must
acknowledge, too, the patient help of the Interlibrary Loan section of the
University of British Columbia Library. The librarians there have done
much to smooth out the rocky path of my research. I owe thanks, too, to
my successor as head of the University of British Columbia Department of
Classics, Anthony Barrett, whose yoke has been very easy. Last but by no
means least, I acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Richard Stoneman,
senior editor at Routledge, who has waited out this book’s gestation
period with patience.

My son, Andrew, has given me invaluable assistance with the maps shown
on pp. xi–xiii. The map on p. xi is taken from C. Mango and R. Dagron,
Constantinople and its Hinterlands (Ashgate Publishing Co., 1955), and
the map on pp. xii–xiii is derived from A.H.M. Jones, The Decline of the
Ancient World (Longman, Green & Co., 1966), both with permission.

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Map of Constantinople

Map of the Roman Empire
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THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN

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Page 1

INTRODUCTION
The definitive history of Justinian has not yet been written. I am not sure that one can write a truly
‘definitive history’ about any figure in the historical landscape, but I have no doubt that the time is not
ripe for a ‘definitive history’ of Justinian. A generation ago, the possibility seemed closer than it does
now. Edward Gibbon’s model for decline and fall was still largely accepted. Justinian’s attempt to regain
the lost territories of the Roman Empire could be regarded as a misguided attempt to reverse the course of
history which resulted in fatal inattention to the eastern provinces. His corpus of law was a major
attainment, to be sure, as Gibbon recognized, and his great church of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul stands as
witness to his achievement as a builder. But even Hagia Sophia puts his personality flaws on record.
Impatient, eager that his great church should exhibit his worthiness as God’s vicegerent on earth, he
refused the builders time for their mortar to set properly, thereby contributing to the structure’s
instability. Yet Hagia Sophia has lasted far better than his conquests, which began to crumble before the
century was over.
Our perspective has changed. We are better equipped now to see Justinian and his empress Theodora
within their own context. Late Antiquity was not a period of inevitable decline, and what was most
impressive about the eastern Roman Empire and its successor state was their ability to survive a series of
hammer blows as a succession of folk migrations from the ‘Third World’ of the Asian steppe pushed
against the imperial boundaries. Within the empire too, Justinian’s age saw plague, earthquakes and
apprehension that the world was nearing its end. Perforce the empire changed. But change and decline are
very different matters.
So perhaps the time is ripe to attempt a reassessment, even if the definitive history must wait. Justinian
was the offspring of a Thracian
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Page 2
peasant family: a parvenu in a society which was all the more conscious of status and background
because it allowed a good deal of social mobility. His wife was an actress, and actresses in contemporary
Constantinople had the status of whores, with good reason. The pair made a remarkable husband-and-
wife team as long as Theodora lived, and her influence did not die with her. I cannot think of a close
parallel. The emperor Augustus took his wife Livia’s advice very seriously, but that was as far as it went.
Livia was never Augustus’ loyal opposition: publicly she did not oppose him at all. Nor can I think of a
good modern counterpart. Perhaps Juan and Evita Perón of Argentina come close. But the comparison
cannot be pressed. Yet this imperial couple left their mark on their historical period as few rulers have.
I came to Justinian in a roundabout way. I began as a papyrologist, but my research stopped short of Late
Antiquity. But Egypt led to Herodotus, and in the process I started to cast glances in the direction of the
late Roman imitators of the great historians of classical Greece, not only Herodotus but his great
successor, Thucydides. And so I arrived at the greatest of these, Procopius of Caesarea who, to quote an
elegant phrase of Edward Gibbon, ‘successively composed the history, the panegyric and the satire of his
times’. Without him, we would know a great deal less about Justinian.
The vogue of classicizing history began with the literary movement known as the Second Sophistic.
Lucian of Samosata satirized it in his essay on How to Write History. The best model was Thucydides,
the proper subject was war, the Greek was Attic, and the product was not meant for the masses. It was a
ktema es aei: a ‘possession for all time’. The language of these classicizing historians was a status
marker: it defined them as products of Greek paideia, the cultural legacy of classical Greece. When
Christianity took over the empire, the style developed a mandarin quality, all the more so because the
history of the church lay beyond its self-imposed limits, and Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 260–339/40)
developed a new genre, ecclesiastical history, to narrate the story of the Christian faith. Yet Procopius
and his continuator, Agathias of Myrrhina, were two of the greatest heirs of this tradition which the
Second Sophistic began, and taken together, within their limits, they are the fullest sources for Justinian’s
reign.
Averil Cameron has dealt ably with both of these historians, and the reader who wants to know more
about them should turn to her books.1 But the personality of Procopius is of importance, and so,
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