Justinian

by Ross Laidlaw

  ‘Would I, indeed! My thanks, Horatius — you’ve done well to tell me this. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep me informed of any future developments.’

  ‘My pleasure, Sir. A word of caution though.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘We wouldn’t want the plot to be aborted, would we, Sir? Best keep what I’ve told you to yourself; it wouldn’t do for any of your vigiles to act in any way which might arouse the suspicions of the plotters. You get my drift, Sir?’

  ‘Rest assured, Horatius. This conversation will remain between ourselves.’

  ‘I’ll be off then, Sir; I see your workmen beginning to arrive at the cistern over there. I’ll keep you posted, never fear.’

  The plot, of course, must not be allowed to succeed, thought Procopius, as he made his way down from the Necropolis towards the great shining square that marked the Cistern of Saint Mocius, one of the three that were open to the air. Usurpation — though a frequent occurrence in the old Western Empire — had never succeeded in the East, though the Nika Riots had come pretty close. Should the conspiracy be foiled by others than the prefect and his vigiles, then he, Procopius, would appear in a most unfavourable light — incompetent at best, implicit in the plot at worst. If, on the other hand, the coup succeeded, what then? As a favoured appointee of the murdered emperor, he might well find himself proscribed by the new regime as politically tainted. Alternatively, one or both of the two Justins might launch a counter-coup. Should Justinian’s usurper be deposed as a result, Procopius, as former prefect responsible for law and order in the city, would be blamed for failing to forestall him in the first place.

  That he, Procopius, might harbour such reservations, would not have occurred to someone like Horatius — clearly a blinkered idealist who probably imagined all Friends of Libertas to be as altruistic as himself. Anicius Julianus on the other hand, being a man of the world had understood that, while one might be prepared to support a noble cause, there was nothing wrong with expecting due compensation for providing that support, or for not being willing to make the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of the cause. Not for him that ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’* hogwash. His undercover work for Libertas had, for sure, been dangerous at times; but it had been well rewarded, the risk adding spice to the campaign of sabotage which he had waged, not altogether unsuccessfully, against Belisarius.

  Meanwhile, he would pretend to go along with Horatius, learning from him all he could about the details of the plot. Then, in a pre-emptive strike, he would arrest the conspirators before they could carry out their intention. He, Procopius, would be the hero of the hour, no doubt to be suitably recompensed for his boldness and professionalism. Libertas was a cause lost many years before; a sensible man accepted that and moved on. Then a sudden happy thought occurred to him. There was something to be salvaged from the wreck of that abandoned dream — something that would provide enormous satisfaction, while incurring not the slightest risk. .

  Meeting regularly with Horatius at the Necropolis in the course of the next two weeks, Procopius learned the following. Marcellus, Ablabius and Sergius had arranged with the master of ceremonies (no doubt some coin changing hands) for their couches at the feast to be the ones nearest to Justinian’s. The third accomplice, Sergius (from whom Horatius obtained his information), had received assurances from his two officer friends that, in support of the coup, they would call out a large number of the Palace Guard, disgruntled over recent cost-cutting measures regarding donatives and privileges.

  Procopius now confided to Horatius that he had just stumbled upon reliable information that Belisarius was privy to the plot, and (though his position prevented him from openly declaring it) intended to lend it his support. The general’s huge authority and popularity would, Procopius pointed out, virtually guarantee the coup’s success. Of course, he, Procopius, had no such secret knowledge; it was merely a fabrication to implicate Belisarius. Planted in Horatius’ mind, the seed would germinate and grow. Passing by osmosis to Sergius, then to Sergius’ two officer friends, it would serve to cast suspicion on the general in the event of anyone ‘talking’ under interrogation in the aftermath of the plot’s exposure.

  What a delicious way to settle an old score, thought the prefect. Now, he stood to be paid back in overflowing measure for all those mind-numbingly tedious hours when, as official war historian compiling his account, he had been forced to listen to Belisarius enlarging on his deeds of derring-do. The man was an unashamed glory-hunter, a romantic dreamer who loved war for its own sake, who had seemed to treat campaigning as a game, where opponents like Witigis or Totila were regarded more as sporting rivals to be treated with respect and courtesy than as deadly enemies to be eliminated by whatever means were most effective. That was something Narses understood; a professional soldier to his fingertips, he had finished off in months a war that Belisarius had allowed to drag on for nearly two decades, resulting in destruction and suffering on an incalculable scale.

  Should Belisarius’ ‘involvement’ in the plot come to light, it would cause the general acute embarrassment at the very least. More likely it would incur public humiliation, with loss of office, wealth, or even liberty, while his ‘betrayal’ would come as a bitter blow to Justinian, who regarded the general not only as a valued servant, but as a trusted friend. Libertas may have failed, Procopius reflected, but at least the tyrant and his minion would not escape entirely a measure of just retribution.

  On the fifteenth day of October, the Palace, especially its kitchens, hummed with activity concerning preparations for the banquet to be hosted by the emperor. Cleaning, tidying, arranging, checking lists, scores of menials and slaves, chivvied by silentiarii implementing the instructions of the Magister Officiorum — Peter the Patrician — transformed the Triklinos or state banqueting hall into a space of glittering magnificence, with couches of rare woods decked with silken cushions, elegant tables supporting dishes, flagons, bowls, and goblets, all of solid gold and finest workmanship, and everywhere swags and garlands of sweet-smelling flowers.

  Mid-afternoon, and Justinian’s guests — the great and good of Constantinople, resplendent in their robes of office — began arriving: senators, patricians, generals, bishops, the Patriarch. After being announced by the master of ceremonies, these were shepherded to their places by silentiarii. Smiling, affable, welcoming to all, Justinian was the very model of a gracious host, his mood serene and happy following the morning’s service of re-dedication in Hagia Sophia, its restored dome more glorious even than before.

  Course followed course of exquisite food, each accompanied by the appropriate wine; then, when the lamps had been lit and the last course finished, the master of ceremonies proposed a toast to, ‘Flavius Anicius Justinianus — our Thrice-Blessed Augustus, Restorer of the Roman World.’

  All rose and raised their goblets. Then a collective gasp of horror burst from the assembled guests as three senators, placed nearest to the emperor, drew daggers from beneath their robes and stepped towards Justinian. But before they could strike, they were surrounded, overpowered, and disarmed by vigiles disguised as servants. Bursting free from his captors, one of the would-be assassins grabbed a carving knife from a table and, before he could be re-apprehended, drew the blade across his throat. Spouting in scarlet jets from severed arteries, blood fountained through the air, splashing Justinian’s purple robe.

  In a dungeon deep in the bowels of the Praetorium, the remaining two conspirators in manacles — Marcellus being the one who had died by his own hand — stood before the seated prefect. The room’s other occupants were a dozen vigiles, and a carnifex or torturer, who stood beside a table on which, like a set of surgeon’s instruments, was ranged the grisly tool-kit of his trade. In a corner, an array of rods and pincers projected from a glowing brazier.

  ‘Just tell me all you know,’ said Procopius in pleasant tones. ‘You’ll talk anyway — eventually. So why suffer unnecessarily?’

  Both men remaining silent, t
he prefect nodded to the torturer. The man approached the pair, bearing in gloved hands an iron rod with white-hot tip. This was applied to the backs of the prisoners, these being restrained securely in the grip of burly vigiles. A sickening stench of burning flesh filled the dungeon. Ablabius remained silent, blood dripping down his chin from where he had bitten through his lower lip, but Sergius screamed aloud in agony. ‘No more!’ he sobbed, as the iron was withdrawn. ‘I’ll tell you everything.’

  It all came out: the announcement to be made that the emperor was dead; the part to be played by Sergius’ two officer friends in persuading a section of the Palace Guards to back the coup; the information that Belisarius himself supported the conspiracy. All this was confirmed when the two officers in question were arrested and interrogated. (Horatius meanwhile had disappeared — provided with a bag of solidi and instructed to escape.)

  Disdaining flight (suggested by his friends) as admission of complicity in the plot, Belisarius indignantly refuted before the Council the ‘evidence’ produced against him. Nevertheless, he was judged guilty and, though his life was spared in consideration of his forty years of loyal service, he was put under house arrest, and his wealth confiscated. However, no hard proof emerging that he was involved in the conspiracy, the following year Belisarius was released and restored to favour. Too late; his heart broken by grief and resentment, the great general — perhaps the greatest Roman general of all — died a few months later.

  Shock and sadness over what he perceived as betrayal by his oldest friend changed to remorse and bitter self-recrimination on Justinian’s part as he came at last to see that Belisarius was no traitor, but the innocent victim of malicious rumour.

  Revenge, as a Greek philosopher once said, was indeed a dish best eaten cold, reflected Procopius as, lauded and heaped with honours by a grateful emperor, he basked in his new-found reputation as the saviour of the monarchy.

  * Civic dignitaries. The plot was investigated in 560, but the case fizzled out for lack of evidence. None of the mud stuck to Peter himself, for we find him in post as Master of Offices throughout that year, and in 562 negotiating a Fifty Year Peace with Persia.

  * Horace, Odes. ‘It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  Nothing is lost; destruction is only a name for a change of substance

  Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, c. 50 BC

  The funeral, as befitted one of the best prefects Constantinople had known, was a grand and solemn service. A moving eulogy, delivered by Paul the Silentiary,* paid tribute to a distinguished public servant who had graced the world of scholarship and letters with his great History of the Wars of Justinian, having himself taken part in many of the campaigns he wrote about so eloquently. Above all, the Roman world owed an incalculable debt to one who, only a few short months before, had, by his expertise and boldness, foiled a monstrous plot to assassinate the emperor. All Constantinople had, it seemed, turned out to pay its last respects to the great Praefectus, as the cortege proceeded from the Praetorium to the Church of Saint Irene, where the body of Procopius was laid to rest.

  Returning to the Palace, Justinian retreated to the garden where he and Theodora had first met and which, increasingly, had become a place of refuge where he could be by himself with his deepest thoughts. At last, he was quite alone, the emperor reflected sadly. In turn there had been taken from him: first Theodora, both cornerstone and central pillar of his life; then Belisarius, the friend and faithful servant he had wronged; and now, Procopius — whom, in some ways, he had loved like the son he had never known. Were all things transitory, he wondered, with loss and change the only certainties? All his life he had striven to establish good things that would endure: a Roman Empire that would last forever, serving to implement God’s Plan for the light of civilization and True Faith to shine in time throughout the world; laws that would guide men’s conduct down the ages; great buildings of a design and structure to defy the ravages of time. .

  But perhaps it had all been for nothing. Everywhere, blind, uncaring forces seemed to be threatening all he had achieved. Ferocious Lombards were already casting greedy eyes on Italy, ravaged and weakened by twenty years of war; Slavs, Bulgars, and now this new threat from the East, a race more terrible even than the Huns — the Avars — menaced the Danube frontier. His attempts to forge religious unity between East and West — Monophysite and Chalcedonian — had foundered on the rocks of ignorance and stubborn wilfulness. When he passed away (and, at eighty-one, that time could not be distant, Justinian reminded himself), would all that he had worked for fade and vanish also, as ripples from a pebble cast into a pool were briefly seen then disappeared? Was his new-found interest in Aphthartodocetism — the doctrine that held Christ’s body to be incorruptible — merely a reflection of a longing for assurance that some things did not change, were immutable and permanent? Insidiously, a terrifying thought slid into the emperor’s brain. What if the very faith he had striven all his life to understand and serve were nothing more than empty superstition?

  In the midst of these gloomy cogitations, Justinian was interrupted by a servitor bearing a book — not an old-fashioned set of papyrus rolls or volumina, but one of the newer kind with parchment paginae.

  ‘In his Will, Serenity, the prefect stated that he wished you to have the first copy of his final work.’ Bowing, the man handed the codex to Justinian, then departed. Inscribed in gold on the beautiful calf-leather binding was the title — Secret History. Welcoming this distraction from his mood of sombre introspection, the emperor opened the book and eagerly began to read. .

  ‘Justinian’s family was illiterate, boorish, descended from slaves and barbarians. . he [Justinian] was the son of a demon. . Justinian’s senseless wars and persecutions. . during his reign the whole earth was drenched with human blood. . without hesitation he shattered the laws when money was in sight. . was like a cloud of dust in instability. . never paused for a thorough investigation before reaching a decision. . was never able to adhere to settled conditions, but was naturally inclined to make confusion and turmoil everywhere. . while Justinian ruled no law remained fixed, no transaction safe, no contract valid. . an evil-doer and easily led into evil. . she [Theodora] could win over her husband quite against his will to any action she desired. . she would lie with all her fellow diners the whole night long; when she had reduced them all to a state of exhaustion she would go to their menials, as many as thirty on occasions, and copulate with every one of them, but not even so could she satisfy her lust. .’

  With a cry of horrified disgust, Justinian dropped the book, unable to read on, each poisoned phrase seeming like a dagger-thrust to the heart. From what deep well of resentment had issued this astonishing outpouring of hate and malice? Shaken to the core of his being, Justinian felt, not anger — only sorrow, hurt, and incomprehension that a man he had always regarded as a friend, should see him (and Theodora) in such a baleful light. A black depression settled on the emperor, from which, for many days he was unable to be roused.

  ‘Serenity — Tan-Shing, the Chinese sage I told you of is here,’ announced Paul the Silentiary, standing at the entrance of Justinian’s tablinum. ‘Shall I admit him?’

  ‘Let us receive him by all means, Paul,’ replied the emperor with a wan smile, ‘though I doubt that anything he has to say can lift my spirits.’

  The silentiary ushered into the emperor’s study, an elderly Chinese, upright of bearing, with a keen, good-humoured face, and clad in a saffroncoloured robe. He seated himself at the emperor’s invitation.

  ‘I am told your mind is troubled,’ the visitor declared in perfect Greek. ‘Excuse my bluntness, Serenity; unlike most of my countrymen I never learned the art of how to be discreet. To me, a spade has always been a spade, never an agricultural implement. Some members of your household — who shall be nameless, by the way — out of concern for your well-being have asked me to make contact with you. So, here I am. To help in any way I can.’
And Tan-Shing gave the emperor a beaming smile.

  ‘Some members of your household,’ thought Justinian, touched rather than offended by what others might interpret as presumption. That would include Paul the Silentiary and Theoctistus his physician, functionaries in whom solicitude for their employer transcended efficient performance of their duties. Clearly, some attribute possessed by this stranger had impressed such men sufficiently to make them send him here.

  ‘Well, Tan-Shing,’ replied the emperor, ‘I appreciate your offer. But if even my physician cannot cure my — sickness of the spirit, let us call it — I can’t see how — ’ Close to shameful tears, Justinian trailed off, moved that there were some who cared sufficiently to wish to help him, but oppressed by a terrible sense of hopelessness that nothing anyone could do would avail. With an effort, he pulled himself together and said with forced brightness, ‘Your Greek is excellent. I had feared we might have need of an interpreter.’