Justinian (17 page)

‘The vagaries of women,' sighed Justinian to Tribonian, with a smile and a shrug of simulated helplessness. ‘You must be hungry, my dear,' he said, turning back to Theodora. ‘Perhaps you'd like to order breakfast for us both – to be served in the garden where we used to hold our meetings.'

‘Oh my dear, I cannot tell you how relieved I am you did not tell him!' Macedonia exclaimed, after Theodora had rejoined her later that day, and confessed what she had planned to do. ‘Not so much because it would have jeopardized our own relationship, but that it could have come between yourself and him. Men, far more than women, tend to be sensitive and insecure where their self-image is concerned. Most husbands, learning that their wives had done what we have, would – however irrationally – feel jealous and diminished. From what you tell me of Justinian, he may well be above such sentiments, but I would not like to bank on it.'

Taking Theodora's hand, Macedonia looked imploringly into her eyes. ‘Darling, you do not have to choose between us. Your husband and I are not in competition for your love. I think it was a Chinese sage, one Kung Fu-tze,
**
who said that for a serene and happy life free of inner conflict, the wise person should keep the different aspects of his life in separate compartments. In former times, Greek women were free to love each other outwith marriage. Soon, my dear, I must return to Antioch; we may not meet again for many months. So let us take what joy of each other the Gods allow us, while we may.'

‘Very well, my love,' said Theodora softly, slipping an arm around the other's waist. ‘I'll say nothing to Justinian. You have convinced me – almost – that keeping silence is the best and wisest course. Anyway, I don't think I could bear to give you up.' She laughed tremulously, and went on. ‘I shall do as you suggest, and put our love in a box marked ‘Macedonia'. It'll be our special secret.'

Aided by unscrupulous subordinates, with names like ‘Alexander the Scissors' or ‘John the Leaden-Jawed' attesting their unpopularity, John of Cappadocia pressed on apace with his drive to fill the Treasury. Tax defaulters were treated with callous disregard for individual circumstances: one Petronius – a respected citizen of Philadelphia – was chained in a stable and beaten, until he had agreed to hand over the family jewels in lieu of payment of a supposed new tax on inherited wealth; in the same town, an old soldier hanged himself after being tortured to force him to pay up, despite being destitute. Far from being exceptional, such examples were typical of the lengths to which the prefect and his enforcers were prepared to go, in order to keep the revenue from taxes flowing in.

A regimen of swingeing cuts was visited upon the civil service. To squeals of anguished but ineffectual protest, mass sackings with savage pruning of departments became the order of the day. When the administration had been purged of all excessive fat, the prefect directed his economizing zeal towards the
cursus publicus
. The state postal service was not so much trimmed as virtually destroyed, leaving the infrastructure of but one route intact – that of the strategically important highway from Constantinople to the Persian frontier. On all other roads throughout the Empire, the following were totally abandoned: maintenance, relays of horses, postal stations, the hire of vehicles for travel or transport. The effect of this particular cost-cutting measure was immediate and disastrous. Farmers in the inland provinces were suddenly deprived of the means (on which they had relied for centuries) of conveying their goods to the ports, whence they were shipped to Constantinople and other centres. With the cost of private transport beyond the reach of the majority, many were reduced to trying to carry their goods to the ports themselves . . .

Staring at the roadside corpse, a half-spilled sack of corn beside it (the sixth such he had encountered that morning), Basil – a small farmer from the province of Lydia, en route to Ephesus – lowered the heavy bale from his shoulders to the ground. He turned towards his wife, several paces behind and tottering beneath the weight of an enormous sack of grain.
‘Enough,' he declared bitterly. ‘We will turn back now – unless we wish to end up like one of these.' And he indicated the body on the road.

‘But how will we live unless we sell our produce?' cried the woman, and began to weep. ‘If we can't get it to market, our corn will just rot in the fields.'

‘Hush, my dear,' soothed Basil, putting his arms around her. ‘Let it rot. We can harvest enough for ourselves to see us through the winter. Next year perhaps, the emperor will come to his senses and appoint another prefect. We can but hope.'

Basil's plight was shared by countless other
coloni
. Everywhere, farmers went bankrupt and flocked to the cities in search of employment, adding more hungry mouths to a near-starving urban population. For, with food production stalling, a state of famine threatened to develop in many areas. The farmers were not alone in their resentment. At the beginning of a bitterly cold January in Justinian's sixth regnal year – the two hundred and third from the Founding of New Rome
*
– there converged upon the capital a host of angry citizens: members of the upper classes (senators and councillors making common cause with the great landowners); small farmers, representative of the great mass of the population; supporters of the Blues; Church leaders; intellectuals; those ruined by the tax-collectors, or denied justice because they lacked the cash to bribe Tribonian, Justinian's brilliant but corrupt top jurist. Disparate they might be, but all groups were united by a single purpose – to make the emperor listen to their grievances (above all those to do with John of Cappadocia), when he opened the races in the Hippodrome on the Ides of January.
**

Meanwhile, delighted with the spate of revenue pouring into the Treasury (surely a sign of God's approval), and blissfully unaware of the impending storm, Justinian was preoccupied with plans to replace his native village with a splendid new city – to be named Justiniana Prima. In doing this, he would be honouring his promise to fulfil his mother's wish, to ‘make us proud of you'.

*
Senatus Populusque Romanus
– the Senate and People of Rome.

*
In 529.

*
It was in fact completed in just under fourteen months: begun on 13 February 528, and published on 8 April 529 – a staggering achievement!

**
Confucius.

*
532. (See Notes.)

**
Tuesday the 13th.

Nika!
*

Cry of the mob rioting in Constantinople, 13 January 532

The ninth day of January of that year, the two hundred and third from the Founding of New Rome, dawned cold and grey. A bitter wind from the Bosphorus gusted through Constantinople's streets, causing beggars and the destitute huddled in doorways to wrap rags and blankets more tightly round their shivering frames. As the city stirred into life, angry restless crowds everywhere materialized, swirling about the squares and thoroughfares in sullen knots and eddies. Above the throngs placards bobbed: ‘Give us work' . . . ‘Give us food'. . . ‘Down with Tribonian' . . . ‘Hang the Cappadocian'. As the morning wore on, the mood of the crowds grew steadily more tense and menacing. They began to search for a target on which they could vent their wrath. That target would soon, obligingly, present itself . . .

Eudaemon, the city prefect, was a worried man. A report had just reached him in his headquarters – the Praetorium – by messenger from the
curator
of Region V, informing him that the crowds, now grown noisy and unruly, were massing in the Forum of Constantine.

‘Too close to the Palace for comfort, Phocas,' Eudaemon muttered to his second-in-command. ‘Time perhaps to show the flag.'

‘No “perhaps” about it, sir,' the
optio
retorted. ‘We should have cracked down hard hours ago. Arrested the ringleaders. Dispersed the rest by force. Now, we'll be lucky not to have a riot on our hands.'

‘You're forgetting, Phocas,' responded the prefect with asperity, ‘these people have good reason to be angry.' He regarded his Number Two – a burly six-footer with a nose broken in suppressing some street brawl – disapprovingly. ‘They're not your average troublemakers, like the Circus factions, say. Most are ordinary decent citizens – frightened and desperate, thanks largely to the policy of John of Cappadocia. What they need are reassurances, not threats.'

‘My heart bleeds, sir. Meanwhile, as we sit here discussing the rights
and wrongs of the situation, things out there are getting out of hand. Permission to call the men to action stations?'

Minutes later, Eudaemon and Phocas, at the head of several hundred
vigiles
, set out from the Praetorium near the Palace towards ‘the Forum', as the Forum of Constantine was colloquially known. Each policeman, helmeted and carrying a riot shield, in addition to his nightstick, had been issued a baldric from which was suspended a military
spatha
. As the force entered the vast circular enclosure dominated by a tall column surmounted by a statue of the City's Founder, via the easternmost of its two great gates, Eudaemon's heart sank. The crowds had now morphed into that most dangerous of entities – a mob. Such an assembly was animated by a seemingly collective will, which could, in an instant, turn mindlessly ferocious, however rational its constituent parts might be.

Orchestrated by prominent members of the Greens and Blues, the huge concourse, on spotting the
vigiles
, broke into a baying chorus of boos and jeers, chilling in its menacing hostility. Mounting the tribunal beneath the gate's central arch, Eudaemon tried to reason with the mob, assuring them that if they went home quietly, their grievances would be addressed. His (largely inaudible) words seemed merely to inflame his audience, who responded with a barrage of catcalls and abuse.

Then someone threw a stone, and things turned ugly. The air was suddenly filled with flying missiles, one of which struck the prefect (who, in order to appear less confontational, had removed his helmet) on the head. Blood pouring from his temple, the prefect staggered, but before he could collapse, was helped down from the platform by two of his men.

‘Enough of this,' snarled Phocas, to no one in particular. Without waiting to consult his wounded superior, he turned to the helmeted ranks behind him and shouted, ‘Charge!'

Now thirsting for revenge on behalf of their stricken leader, the
vigiles
advanced behind a wall of shields, and commenced laying into the densely packed mass of people with their batons. Beneath a steady rain of blows from the disciplined ranks of police, the crowds began to waver and fall back – until rallied by demagogues of the Blues and Greens, who urged them to fight back with stones and other improvised weapons. Soon, a pitched battle was raging, with individuals falling on both sides. Then, as the
vigiles
lost patience and exchanged their clubs for swords, the mob broke up in panic, leaving the Forum strewn with bloody corpses – but not before several of the ringleaders had been identified and rounded up.

‘Bring in the defendants and the witnesses!' shouted the sergeant-at-arms. Accompanied by guards and ushers, the two respective parties filed into the basilica, the expressions on the faces of the accused variously defiant, terrified, or resigned. The witnesses (their role in this case doubling as accusers) took up their positions to the right of the judge. This was Tribonian, – hastily appointed as
quaesitor
to investigate the serious breach of public order that had occurred in the Forum of Constantine the previous day. The accused then lined up to Tribonian's left. A State of Emergency having been proclaimed throughout the city following the riot in the Forum, the prefect, with the emperor's authority, had decreed that this was to be a summary trial. Niceties like the offices of
defensor
(whose function was to weigh up evidence from both Defence and Prosecution) and
adsessor
(a legal expert to advise the
defensor
on finer points of law) would be dispensed with, and the court barred to the public. Other than the abovementioned, the only other persons in the courtroom were, seated on benches, a selection of the
vigiles
present at the scene of the disturbance, and Eudaemon the prefect, his head swathed in bandages.

The first accused being called, the man shuffled forward nervously to face the judge.

‘Your name is Peter, a cobbler to trade, of Aphrodisias in Caria?' enquired Tribonian, his expression benevolent, his tone polite, kindly even.

The man nodded.

‘The charge against you is most serious, Peter: namely that, maliciously, feloniously, and seditiously, you did throw a stone or some such hard and weighty projectile at the
Praefectus Urbis
, causing it to strike him on the head, to his severe distress and hurt. How plead you to the charge?'

‘I wouldn't do a thing like that, Your Most Notable!' cried the man in desperation. ‘I've never hurt anyone in my life. I – I just got caught up in the crowd and happened to be there when the prefect got hit.'

‘It were him all right, Most Notable,' affirmed the first witness – one of the dreaded crew of
delatores
or informers, whose evidence was much called upon in public order cases. ‘I recognize him from that birthmark on his cheek.'

‘Then, Peter, I must find you guilty as charged,' pronounced Tribonian in a sad voice. ‘As your action seems, on the evidence, to have been contributory to causing a violent affray in which several innocent parties were killed or injured, there can only be one sentence: death by hanging. Remove the prisoner.'

As Peter, white-faced and protesting, was bundled from the courtroom, an usher came up to the judge and whispered in his ear, ‘Next one's a bigwig in the Blues,
Spectabilis
. Says the management'll stump up five hundred
solidi
on his behalf.'