Procopius was born late in the fifth century at Caesarea in Palestine and trained for the law. In 527 he became legal adviser and secretary to the young general Belisarius, and he went with him to the eastern frontier, to Africa in 533 and to Italy in 536. His History of the Wars, in eight books, covers Justinian's campaigns against Persia, the Vandals and the Goths; he also wrote the Buildings, a panegyric on Justinian's construction works, and the Secret History, a hostile account of the same court that was not published in his lifetime. He was in Constantinople during the plague of 542, and he probably died in the 550s or 560s.
Frequently Cited
“It was his conviction that while cleverness is appropriate to rhetoric, and inventiveness to poetry, truth alone is appropriate to history.”
The first two books of Procopius's History of the Wars tell the long contest between the Roman Empire, ruled from Constantinople, and Sasanian Persia, from the early fifth century to 549. Procopius opens by declaring that he writes so that great deeds will not be lost, that he was an eyewitness as adviser to Belisarius, and that truth alone suits history.
The Secret History, in Greek the Anekdota or unpublished things, is a short work in thirty chapters in which Procopius sets out to tell what he says he could not safely write in his Wars while its subjects were alive: the hidden causes of events and the private conduct of the emperor Justinian, the empress Theodora, the general Belisarius and his wife Antonina. It is usually dated to about 550, though some scholars place it later in the 550s, and it was not circulated in Procopius's lifetime.