Justinian

John Moorhead

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317898788
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The reign of Justinian (527--65) was a key phase in the transition from the Roman empire of classical times to the Byzantine empire of the Middle Ages. Justinian himself, born of peasant stock in a provincial backwater, was one of the greatest rulers yet, despite prodigious achievements, he remained an outsider in the sophisticated society of Constantinople. Here, John Moorhead reinterprets Justinian as man and monarch, together with his formidable empress, the ex-actress Theodora, and assesses the evidence from their time for the evolution of a distinctively medieval world.

Chapter 1
Early Years

. . .
The Late Roman Empire

In the time of the Roman empire the lands around the Mediterranean were knit together more closely than at any other period in human history. Spreading outwards from a peninsula in the centre of the sea, the arms of Rome had conquered a wide swathe of territory throughout which the imposition of the one government, the practice of Roman law, the use of a unified system of coinage and, ultimately, the existence of one state religion progressively tended to lessen regional distinctions. The empire constituted a vast, largely self-sufficient common market within which areas could specialize in the production of such items as grain, wine, oil, pottery and papyrus; every summer what Julius Caesar nonchalantly referred to as 'our sea' was filled with cargo ships. Its cohesiveness was displayed in the remarkable uniformity of its towns, from Britain to Syria, which a fine network of roads brought close together.

But as the centuries passed the political expression ot this unity evaporated. Late in the third century the emperor Diocletian divided the empire into eastern and western parts, each with its own emperor, and in 324 his successor, Constantine, ordered the beginning of work on a 'new Rome' named after himself, not far from where Diocletian had based himself in the East. Constantinople, inaugurated in 330, was built on the site of Byzantium, a former colony Greeks had founded nearly a thousand years earlier. The site was a good one, for it controlled the straits which linked the Mediterranean and Black seas and was the point where the continents of Europe and Asia approached each other more closely than anywhere else in the empire. It was also at the easternmost end of the Via Egnatia, an important road which ran almost due westwards to the coast of the Adriatic Sea, across which Italy was a short trip away, while on the other side of the Bosphorus was the terminus of the main highway leading towards Persia. So it was that Constantinople enjoyed excellent communications by both sea and land.

The work of Diocletian and Constantine marked a change in the political centre of gravity in an empire of which Rome had earlier been the undisputed centre. Subsequent dramatic events were to speed up this process. In the late fourth century a group of people called Visigoths crossed the Danube, and in 401 they invaded Italy. Before long the other key northern frontier, that of the Rhine, was seriously breached, and the effective reach of the western government was increasingly restricted until 476, when a barbarian strongman deposed the last Roman emperor in the West. Within the lifespans of a few generations all the provinces to the west of Croatia had been politically detached from those parts of the empire in the East.

The remaining portion of the empire was, at first site, a heterogeneous agglomeration of territories. In Europe, its western frontier ran northwards from the Adriatic coast to the Danube. On the other side of this border lay territories ruled from Italy, where the Ostrogoths were to establish a strong kingdom under their king Theoderic at the end of the fifth century. The border proceeded along the Danube to the Black Sea. The land to the north of the river remained the home of barbarians, as it had for centuries, but the hold of the empire on the Balkans had been weak for much of the fifth century, and the movement westwards of groups such as the Goths opened the way for other Germanic groups, as well as peoples of Hunnic and Slavic ethnicity, to move into the region. So it was that the government was unable to exercise effective power over much of the territory south of the Danube which was nominally part of the empire. The eastern border began at the south-eastern corner of the Black Sea, from which it proceeded in a southerly direction to the Euphrates. Here the empire's neighbour was Persia, a longestablished and powerful state quite capable of looking its rival in the eye. From the Euphrates the border continued with a more westerly orientation across a desert populated by bedouin Arabs to Aqaba, whence it followed the Sinai peninsula and the west coast of the Red Sea. Much of the wealthy Nile valley was part of the empire, as was a strip of coastal territory to the west of Alexandria. Imperial territory came to an end at a point almost due south of its most westerly section in Europe.

A conventional way of periodizing history encourages us to see the sundering of the empire in the fifth century as constituting a dramatic break in the history of Europe. But care is called for, as it can certainly be argued that over most of the territories which came under the power of people the Romans called barbarians, although they did not call themselves this, the basic structures of society continued largely unchanged. To be sure, the rolling back of the imperial frontiers was impressive, but for generations power in the West had been passing from the state to such organs as the army, the landowning aristocracy, and the church, and over most of the lost territory these happily outlived a political apparatus which had been of steadily diminishing importance. Indeed, many Romans were pleased to accommodate themselves to the changed political realities, while many barbarians imitated the Romans as closely as they could. Oddly enough, the perception that the empire had ended in the West in 476 is first given explicit utterance in the chronicle of Marcellinus comes, who wrote in Constantinople in c. 518/519, and there is good reason to see this perception as an eastern rather than a western one.¹ However mild the response of many westerners to the redrawing of the map which occurred in the fifth century, the government of the east could hardly have looked on the process with equanimity.

Political life was not the only way in which the eastern and western parts of the old empire were moving apart. The export of die distinctive pottery which Africa had been shipping overseas in large quantities for centuries declined; the leading churches in each area, those of Rome in die West and Constantinople in the East, found themselves out of communion after 482; and government in Constantinople was increasingly conducted in the Greek language rather than the Latin which continued to be used in the West. But the survival of the empire in the East was never in question. Its major political problem in the fifth century was a comparatively benign variant of the process which had brought imperial government in the West to an end. Whereas Italy had come during the fifth century to be controlled by barbarian generals who governed through puppet emperors and finally decided that the office of emperor was redundant, the East suffered from generals of provincial origin who felt themselves called to greater things. Such a man was Zeno, who made his way from his native soil in Isauria, an area in southern Asia Minor, to Constantinople. He was given a military command, married Ariadne, the daughter of the emperor Leo, and, on the death of his father-in-law, became emperor himself (474-491). Zeno's had been a stunning rise, at the end of which he had neither the name nor the wife with which he had begun. But his career was found worthy of imitation.

Indeed, his own reign was troubled by a series of attempts by generals to depose him. One of these was mounted by the brother-in-law of his predecessor Leo, but more serious were the challenges which came from his fellow Isaurians. When he died there was no obvious successor, and Ariadne's eye fell on an elderly administrator with strong but suspect religious interests, Anastasius, who was crowned emperor and then married the woman to whom he owed the throne. His reign (491-518) was not devoid of incident.² Zeno's brother had hoped to succeed the dead emperor, but Anastasius banished him to Egypt, where he later died of starvation, and within a few years a series of military actions had overcome the problems caused by the Isaurians. Another general, Vitalian, who seems to have had a barbarian father, led the troops under his command against Constantinople itself in 513, in 514, and again in 515, but was repulsed. There were also problems emanating from the church, repercussions of a widespread failure to accept the teaching of the council of Chalcedon (451), which led Anastasius to depose the patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch in 511 and 512 respectively. But under Anastasius the empire enjoyed more peace than it had been used to. The emperor put his leisure to good use by introducing a new system of taxation and applied his administrative skill to bring about savings in the operations of government. He died in 518 leaving 320 000 pounds of gold in the treasury and a number of relatives who could hardly be blamed for being interested in exploiting his good reputation.

The death of the emperor was followed by one of the unexpected transfers of power so characteristic of the period. Anastasius had not groomed a successor. He had three nephews, Hypatius, Pompeius, and Probus, and a story was later told that on one occasion the old emperor, wondering which of them would succeed him, gave them lunch and then told them to take a nap in a room with three couches. Imperial insignia had been hidden under the pillow of one of the couches, and Anastasius waited to see which nephew would choose that couch. But none did. He then prayed that God would reveal who was to follow him on the throne, and one night was told that the first person to be announced to him the following morning would be his successor. Not surprisingly, this was the leader of the imperial bodyguard.³ It is an interesting story, implying as it does that Anastasius' nephews, apparently the sons of his sister Caesaria,⁴ had some claim to the throne, and as we shall see they were to remain an important element in succeeding reigns. But the tale also provides a context for the unexpected accession of Justin.

. . .
The New Emperor and His Nephew

Following the death of Anastasius on 9 July 518 the senators were not able to agree on a successor. The most likely candidate, Hypatius, was serving as commander-in-chief in the East, and out of the city. Amantius, a powerful eunuch, bribed Justin, the leader of the bodyguard, to obtain its support for a claimant whom he hoped to control. But Justin spent the money winning support for himself, and on the next day he became emperor.⁵ The new ruler could charitably be described as a rough diamond. He had been born at the town of Bederiana near Niš, in an area where Latin rather than Greek was spoken, and, rather like Zeno, had made his way to Constantinople to follow a military career. He was said to have been illiterate, and his wife, apparently a barbarian, was thought to have been a slave and the concubine of another man before she caught justin's eye and he bought her. On the elevation of her husband she changed her name from Lupicina, a name unfortunately similar to a slang word for prostitute, to Euphemia. The accession of such a man as Justin was unexpected, and contemporaries expressed surprise that members of the family of Anastasius had been elbowed aside (Procopius Wars 1.11.1). Given the tensions which had surrounded successions during recent decades, it was unlikely that members of the supplanted family would simply go away.

Justin began his reign with vigour. Letters were sent to pope Hormisdas announcing a change in ecclesiastical policy, and in the following year the schism which had separated the churches of Rome and Constantinople since 482 was healed, on the terms of the former. Zeno and Anastasius were condemned, an extraordinary concession by the man who succeeded them as emperor. Justin also moved rapidly to deal with potential enemies. Among them was Amantius, who became involved in disturbances in the cathedral of Hagia Sophia; within a few months he and the man he had hoped to install as emperor had been put to death. People whose careers had languished under Anastasius found themselves gaining preferment. The patrician Apion, a member of a famous Egyptian family, who had been sent into exile and ordained a priest in 510, was recalled and appointed praetorian prefect. Eminent soldiers who had been exiled by Anastasius were also recalled: one was appointed commanderin-chief of the forces of the East, and another enjoyed a consulate in 525.

But Justin did not come to power alone. Like every emperor, he was surrounded by a group of men who, naturally enough, found themselves competing for influence. Among them was Anastasius' old enemy Vitalian. Ambitious generals of his kind had long been a problem in the Roman empire, and they had been particularly prominent in the politics of die preceding century. No-one would have thought that their hour was passed.⁶ Indeed, the rank to which Justin appointed Vitalian in 518, magister militum praesentalis, was that which Zeno had held immediately prior to becoming emperor in 474. Vitalian was to the fore in a group which met legates sent to Constantinople by pope Hormisdas in 519, and in 520 he held the office of consul. But in July of that year he was brutally murdered in the palace. Another important military figure was Germanus, a nephew of Justin, but he was a loyal officer whose office, that of commander-in-chief in Thrace, kept him removed from die palace and its intrigues.

In the royal city, power was in the hands of disparate people. There could be no doubting that the empress wielded significant influence, although we shall later see that this may have been less than some people thought, and other members of the emperor's family could be important in varying degrees. The eunuchs of the bedchamber, who controlled access to the emperor and empress, were in a position where they could wield power. Having become important in administration during the fourth century, they were notorious for their corrupt engagement in politics. Another well-positioned group was the imperial bodyguard, whose members were able to play a prominent political role; Justin was the first of three of its commanders who became emperors in the sixth century. The complex administration of the empire was in the hands of powerful officials. Chief among these was the praetorian prefect, who discharged a very mixed bag of responsibilities. He could almost be regarded as a deputy emperor, and one important holder of the office in the sixth century was accused of harboring imperial ambitions. There were also the quaestor, who had responsibility for legal affairs, the master of the offices, and various financial officials. The responsibilities attached to some of these positions were ill-defined, and so there was frequently rivalry between different parts of the administration. The chief positions were in the gift of the emperor, and they were traditionally enjoyed for short tenures, doubtless a device to prevent those who held them from gaining too much power. The upper reaches of the bureaucracy in the time of Justinian had changed little since major reforms in the fourth century, but one body in public life was far older. The senate, which traced its origins to early Rome, continued to meet in Constantinople. It was less distinguished in membership than that of Rome, and the functions it discharged, most of them advisory or of local import, were not onerous, but it was a place where traditionalist sentiments found a home.

So it was that, while the empire was effectively an autocracy, there were various positions which ambitious people could use to further interests which did not necessarily coincide with those of the emperor. Relatives, generals, eunuchs, bodyguards, administrators and senators all had places in the power structure which could easily be exploited. Among these the military men were the most dangerous, for successful generals such as Vitalian always had the potential to cause trouble. But it quickly became clear that the key figure in the group around Justin was the person everyone blamed for the murder of Vitalian. The emperor's nephew was the figure to watch.

Justinian, the son of Justin's sister and her husband Sabbatius, came from the same region as his uncle, having been born at the village of Tauresium, near Scupi, in about 482.⁷ Nothing is known of his early life, but h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Editor's Preface
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1 Early Years
• CHAPTER 2 The Majesty of the Emperor
• CHAPTER 3 Wars in the West
• CHAPTER 4 Years of Frustration
• CHAPTER 5 The Church
• CHAPTER 6 The North
• CHAPTER 7 The End and Beyond
• Bibliography
• Map
• Index