The Secret History

Summary

The Secret History, in Greek the Anekdota or unpublished things, is a short work in thirty chapters in which Procopius sets out to tell what he says he could not safely write in his Wars while its subjects were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. The library does not store a text or quote from it: public-domain English translations exist, but the work contains sexually explicit invective, especially about Theodora's early life, and is recommended only for older students at a teacher's discretion. The opening chapters turn on Belisarius's household. Antonina is portrayed as dominating her husband and carrying on an affair with their adopted son Theodosius, and Belisarius, the conqueror of Africa and Italy in the Wars, appears weak and compliant; his disgrace after the plague of 542, when generals discussed the succession during Justinian's illness, is told as Theodora's revenge. The central chapters turn to the imperial couple. Procopius describes the rise of Justin, Justinian's uncle, from an Illyrian peasant to emperor, and Theodora's earlier life as a performer in the Constantinople theatre, in deliberately degrading terms. He presents Justinian and Theodora as destroyers of the Roman state and even as demons in human form, reporting stories of the emperor's face dissolving or his head vanishing at night. The final chapters list grievances in detail: confiscations and new taxes, the sale of offices, the work of the ministers John the Cappadocian and Peter Barsymes, the favour shown to the circus faction of the Blues, the cutting of the public post and the soldiers' pay, the neglect of the frontier, the persecution of religious dissenters, and changes to law and to the consulship. Procopius ends promising further revelations. The book survived in a few manuscripts, was known in the tenth century to the Byzantine lexicon called the Suda, and was first printed in 1623 from a Vatican manuscript by Niccolo Alemanni. Its contrast with the measured Wars and the admiring Buildings has made it one of the classic problems of ancient historiography.

Top Lessons

• One historian, three portraits

  Procopius praised Justinian in the Buildings, judged him with restraint in the Wars, and attacked him in the Secret History. Reading the three together shows that a historian's genre, audience and fear shape what he says, and that no single book can be taken as the whole of his view.

• Invective is evidence of a kind

  Ancient invective followed rhetorical conventions: attacks on low birth, sexual conduct, greed and cruelty were standard weapons. The Secret History can tell historians about real policies and about how a section of the governing class felt, but its personal charges must be tested against other sources.

• The cost of grand ambition

  Justinian's reconquest of Africa and Italy, his law code and his buildings, including Hagia Sophia, required enormous revenue. Procopius gives the taxpayers' and officials' side of that story, recording the strain of taxes, confiscations and war on the provinces.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The Secret History is political invective, but it touches the plague of 541-542: Procopius says that when Justinian fell ill with it, officers' talk about the succession gave Theodora a pretext to punish Belisarius and the general Buzes. His fuller description of the plague's symptoms and death toll is in Wars II.22-23, not here. The portrayal of Justinian as sleepless, restless and demonic belongs to the rhetoric of invective and the period's belief in demons rather than to any medical observation, and should not be read as a description of illness.

• Chapter 4

  During Justinian's illness from the plague, talk among the generals about a successor leads to the disgrace of Belisarius and the imprisonment of Buzes.

• Chapter 12

  Procopius reports stories from courtiers that Justinian was a demon in human form, whose head seemed to vanish as he paced at night.