Justinian (45 page)

i)   Who started the drip-drip of malicious rumours about Belisarius, causing Justinian to harbour suspicions about his general regarding his conduct during the Vandal campaign,
**
and later, leading to his recall from Italy?

ii)  Who almost persuaded the Huns to switch sides to the Vandals in Africa?

iii) Who supplied Totila with secret information enabling him to generate a resurgence of Gothic power in Italy?

iv) Who fomented mutiny in Africa, following its reconquest?

v)  Who spread false rumours that Justinian was dead, which led to a constitutional crisis?

vi) Who was behind the hatching of a plot to assassinate Justinian?

None of the above directly points the finger at Procopius. Taken collectively however, they could be significant. On every occasion connected with these queries, Procopius – in an inversion of T.S. Eliot's famous line about McAvity –
was
there. Which, if nothing else, does perhaps serve to ‘put him in the frame'.

*
Procopius had little respect for Belisarius (as evidenced in
Secret History
, where he refers to the general's ‘contemptible conduct') so presumably wouldn't have scrupled to betray him.

**
‘. . . private despatches maliciously affirmed that the conqueror of Africa . . . conspired to seat himself on the throne of the Vandals . . . Justinian listened with too patient an ear; and his silence was the result of jealousy rather than of confidence.' (Gibbon.)

Ammianus Marcellinus

This Roman officer-turned-historian paints a marvellously colourful and detailed picture of the late Roman world in the second half of the fourth century, covering – besides a wealth of fascinating domestic issues such as witchcraft trials and snobbery among the nouveaux riches in Rome – campaigns in Germany, Gaul, Britain and Persia. He ends on a sombre note – the destruction of a huge Roman army by the Goths, at Adrianople in
AD
378. Though he could not foresee it, this disaster would precipitate a chain of events that would culminate in the fall of the Western Empire a century later.

this year of the consul Paulus

Normally, two consuls – one from Constantinople, the other from Rome – were chosen each year, the year being named for them. This practice continued even after the fall of the West, Western consuls being nominated by the first two German kings of Italy – Odovacar, then Theoderic – in their capacity as vicegerents of the Eastern emperor, who held the power to ratify or ignore their choice. A less common way of dating events was from the Founding of the City (of Rome, in 753
BC
) –
Ab Urbe Condita
, or A.U.C. Dating from the birth of Christ was only introduced in 527, at the instigation of one Dionysius Exiguus, but was not generally adopted before the age of Charlemagne and King Alfred. Dating for the interim period between the lapsing of consular dates (the office was abolished in 539) and the adoption of the Christian Era c.
AD
800, was from the supposed Creation (according to one Julius Africanus) on 1 September, 5,508 years, three months, and twenty-five days before the birth of Christ. (See Gibbon's note at the end of Chapter 40 of his
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
.)

elephants and cataphracts

Alexander encountered (Indian) elephants in his Persian and Indian campaigns, and elephants (African ones) were famously used by Hannibal
against the Romans. For a limited period after the end of the Punic wars, elephants were even employed by late Hellenistic armies, before falling out of fashion. Persia, as Ammianus Marcellinus eloquently testifies, was still using war-elephants in the later fourth century, but seems to have abandoned them by the seventh, as they are nowhere mentioned during the East Roman emperor Heraclius' war against Persia in
AD
622.

Cataphracts, or
cataphractarii
– heavily armoured cavalry – appear to have been a Persian invention, but were extensively copied by the late Romans. Strictly, the term ‘cataphract' should apply only when the rider, not his horse, was armoured;
clibanarius
– literally (and appropriately!) ‘oven man' – is the correct term when both were armoured. ‘Cataphract' however, was freely used to describe both types. Cataphracts, despite a superficial resemblance in appearance, were
not
the ancestors of the European mediaeval knight, although often referred to as such. Knighthood was a strictly feudal development, in which military service was an obligation incurred by a grant of land from a feudal superior.

Scipio's tactics against Hannibal

Roderic and Victor were not the only ones to benefit (in their case, fictionally) from the great Roman campaigner's ideas. General ‘Stormin' Norman' Schwarzkopf studied and applied Scipio's tactics with great success in at least one battle in the first Gulf War.

standard regulation issue

From archaeological and representational evidence, we have a clear idea of the equipment of the typical East Roman soldier (both officer and other ranks) of the fifth and sixth centuries. The marvellous Osprey series about armies and campaigns (on whose illustrations in
Twighlight of the Empire
etc., I've based my descriptions) is invaluable for visualizing fighting men of the period. The gear of late Roman soldiers of the Eastern Empire tended to be very conservative. It often featured typically ‘Roman' helmets (actually based on Greek ‘Attic' helmets of Peloponnesian War vintage) that would not have looked out of place on Trajan's Column.

an immensely long pike

The fearsome
sarissa
, or twenty-foot long pike, enabled Alexander to conquer much of Asia with the famous Macedonian phalanx – an invincible formation, provided iron discipline was maintained and enemy archers neutralized in advance. In various guises the pike-phalanx kept reappearing throughout history: as the
schiltron
in the Scottish Wars of Independence, and in the massed formations of Swiss mercenaries and
Landsknechte
of
the Renaissance period and of the English Civil War, where battles could sometimes be decided by ‘push of pike'. The formation's weakness of course was its vulnerability to archery, and later to musket fire. However, in combination with the firearm, the pike as an individual weapon lives on in the shape of the bayonet, proving its value in close combat fighting in campaigns stretching from Blenheim to Afghanistan.

a rigid code of loyalty and honour

Sharing something of the ideal values of Periclean Athens, Republican Rome, mediaeval chivalry, and the code of
Bushido
of Japanese
samurai
, the moral standards of Persian aristocracy were shaped by scrupulous observation of consideration and politeness (often taken to absurd extremes), truthfulness, fidelity and respect for superior rank.

N.B.
Beyond telling us that he was a good and conscientious soldier, the records don't explain how it was that ‘Roderic' came to be awarded, in the words of Gibbon, ‘the dignity of senator, and the command of the guards'. So I felt I had to invent a situation which would allow Roderic to show himself, through action, as the kind of man we believe him to have been. Though fictional, the incidents in the Prologue are (very) loosely linked to real events. The Persians did invade Oriens during the reign of Anastasius, but on the initiative of Kavad
*
himself, not one of his generals; they eventually withdrew, not because of a decisive Roman victory but because the campaign became bogged down in a bloody stalemate; Kavad was under the influence of a powerful personality – not a general, however, but a religious impostor called Mazdak – who may or may not have encouraged him to embark on a military adventure against the East Roman Empire; the defeat of Tamshapur's force is borrowed from an incident occurring in 622, when the East Roman emperor Heraclius routed the cataphracts and infantry of the ferocious Persian general Shahrvaraz, ‘the Wild Boar', who actually did burn prisoners alive on crosses, and who was my model for Tamshapur. The scene of his defeat was suggested by the location of Petra (minus the rock-carved buildings) – a long, sandstone defile, exceedingly narrow in places.

an Edict of Emperor Theodosius

Passed on 24 February 391, this draconian enactment – which was enforced with fanatical thoroughness by the minions of the emperor and his partner in zealotry Bishop Ambrose of Milan, banned
all
pagan practices within the
Empire at a time when many Roman citizens still clung to pagan beliefs. Henceforth, all religious creeds, other than Orthodox Catholicism, were to be deemed illegal, including the Arian form of Christianity – the faith of almost all Germans. But this created a massive inconsistency. Owing to a severe shortage of Roman recruits, Theodosius took the dangerous step of enrolling into the army whole tribes of (Arian) Germans enlisting under their own chieftains. Clearly, there could be no question of trying to make these federates relinquish their Arian belief in order to conform to the Edict; in their case, a blind eye had perforce to be turned. However, this exception did not extend to isolated Gothic communities long settled in the Empire (sometimes referred to as ‘Moeso-Goths', from the province of Moesia Secunda where many of them had made their homes) of which the Goths of Tauresium may have formed an example.

Born 31 August in the year . . . 482

This is necessarily conjectural; we know that Uprauda was born in either 482 or 483, but not the exact date. In Roman times, dates within any given month were calculated by counting the number of days occurring
before
the next of the three fixed days dividing the Roman month: Kalends, the first day of the month, the Nones on the 5th or 7th, and the Ides on the 13th or 15th. (In March, May, July and October, the Nones fell on the 7th and the Ides on the 15th, in the remaining months on the 5th and 13th respectively.) Thus, the Ides of January happening on the 13th of that month, the next day would be termed by a Roman not the 14th, but the 19th
before the Kalends of February
, reckoning inclusively, i.e., taking in both 14 January and the 1 February; and so on to the last day of the month which was termed
pridie Kalendas
. In this particular entry, ‘in the year of' is understood, ablative absolute construction being used to give, ‘Trocundus and Severinus being consuls'.

Legio Quinta Macedonica

Thanks to representational evidence (carvings of the fifth and sixth centuries), we have a very clear idea of the appearance of soldiers of this unit: oval shield decorated with ‘sunflower' motif; scale armour or chain mail hauberk; ‘Attic' helmet (sometimes shown with crest); spear and long sword (spatha) in the case of infantry; short recurved bow but no shield in the case of horse-archers. (See
Twighlight of the Empire
in the excellent Osprey series.)

a vigorous bout of harpastum

Beyond the fact that it appears to have been some sort of competitive
ball-game, I've been unable to discover any details about how
harpastum
may have been played, so have had to fall back on invention. Sidonius Apollinaris – Bishop of Clermont in the fifth century – refers to a game with teams of ball-players throwing and catching balls with swift turns and agile ducking. Could this have been
harpastum
?

that first sight of the city

Among the landmarks mentioned by Petrus, the Walls of Theodosius (at present being restored to something like their original glory), the Golden Gate, and the Aqueduct of Valens are still to be seen – all in a remarkable state of preservation.

the tall column that rose in the middle of the square

Commemorating a bloody pogrom of the Goths in Constantinople in
AD
400, the Column of Arcadius was an ugly example of state-sponsored chauvinism. (Shades of the inscription on Sir Christopher Wren's Monument in London, laying the blame for the Great Fire on the Catholics!) Although, apart from the base, the column was demolished in 1715, we know what it looked like from a drawing made earlier.

the Cistern of Nomus

Nomus was a real person (when Master of Offices during the wars with Attila, he bought time for the Eastern Empire by unobtrusively strengthening the defences of the northern frontier), but the cistern I've named for him is a composite invention. Readers may recognize parts of it from scenes in Istanbul: in the James Bond film,
From Russia with Love
, in the TV series,
Francesco's Mediterranean Voyage
, by Francesco da Mosto, in the Basilica Cistern (Yerebatanserai), which still impresses visitors today.

the Department . . . controlled by the city prefect

‘The principal departments [of the city prefect] were . . . the care of [inter alia] . . . the aqueducts [and] the common sewers . . .' (Gibbon,
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
, Chapter 17.) This passage refers to Rome, but Gibbon goes on to say, ‘a similar magistrate was created in that rising metropolis [Constantinople], for the same uses and with the same powers.'

the capital's prestigious Eleventh Region

This was one of the city's most desirable districts: relatively open, elegant, containing the largest proportion of free-standing houses (
domus
) of all the regions, patronised by the aristocracy, and containing the fashionable church
of the Holy Apostles – a bit like Edinburgh's Morningside or Grange! The best regions were I and II around the Imperial Palace. Regions IV to VIII were the least salubrious, being the areas where labourers, artisans, and the unemployed lived – along the Mesé, and around the fora and the harbours.