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History of the Wars, Books I and II
1
History of the Wars, Books I and II
The Project Gutenberg eBook, History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8),
by Procopius, Translated by H. B. Dewing
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Title: History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) The Persian War
Author: Procopius
Translator: H. B. Dewing
Release Date: September 27, 2005 [eBook #16764]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE WARS, BOOKS I AND II (OF
8)***
E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, jayam, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net/)
History of the Wars, Books I and II
2
PROCOPIUS
With an English Translation by H. B. Dewing
In Seven Volumes
I
HISTORY OF THE WARS, BOOKS I AND II
London William Heinemann Ltd Cambridge, Massachusetts Harvard University Press
MCMLXXI
First Printed 1914
CONTENTS
HISTORY OF THE WARS-- PAGE INTRODUCTION vii
BIBLIOGRAPHY xv
BOOK I.--THE PERSIAN WAR 1
BOOK II.--THE PERSIAN WAR (_continued_) 259
INTRODUCTION
Procopius is known to posterity as the historian of the eventful reign of Justinian (527-565 A.D.), and the
chronicler of the great deeds of the general Belisarius. He was born late in the fifth century in the city of
Caesarea in Palestine. As to his education and early years we are not informed, but we know that he studied to
fit himself for the legal profession. He came as a young man to Constantinople, and seems to have made his
mark immediately. For as early as the year 527 he was appointed legal adviser and private secretary[1] to
Belisarius, then a very young man who had been serving on the staff of the general Justinian, and had only
recently been advanced to the office of general. Shortly after this Justinian was called by his uncle Justinus to
share the throne of the Roman Empire, and four months later Justinus died, leaving Justinian sole emperor of
the Romans. Thus the stage was set for the scenes which are presented in the pages of Procopius. His own
activity continued till well nigh the end of Justinian's life, and he seems to have outlived his hero, Belisarius.
During the eventful years of Belisarius' campaigning in Africa, in Italy, and in the East, Procopius was
moving about with him and was an eye-witness of the events he describes in his writings. In 527 we find him
in Mesopotamia; in 533 he accompanied Belisarius to Africa; and in 536 he journeyed with him to Italy. He
was therefore quite correct in the assertion which he makes rather modestly in the introduction of his history,
that he was better qualified than anyone else to write the history of that period. Besides his intimacy with
Belisarius it should be added that his position gave him the further advantage of a certain standing at the
imperial court in Constantinople, and brought him the acquaintance of many of the leading men of his day.
Thus we have the testimony of one intimately associated with the administration, and this, together with the
importance of the events through which he lived, makes his record exceedingly interesting as well as
historically important. One must admit that his position was not one to encourage impartiality in his
presentation of facts, and that the imperial favour was not won by plain speaking; nevertheless we have before
us a man who could not obliterate himself enough to play the abject flatterer always, and he gives us the
reverse, too, of his brilliant picture, as we shall see presently.
History of the Wars, Books I and II
3
Procopius' three works give us a fairly complete account of the reign of Justinian up till near the year 560
A.D., and he has done us the favour of setting forth three different points of view which vary so widely that
posterity has sometimes found it difficult to reconcile them. His greatest work, as well as his earliest, is the
History of the Wars
, in eight books. The material is not arranged strictly according to chronological sequence,
but so that the progress of events may be traced separately in each one of three wars. Thus the first two books
are given over to the Persian wars, the next two contain the account of the war waged against the Vandals in
Africa, the three following describe the struggle against the Goths in Italy. These seven books were published
together first, and the eighth book was added later as a supplement to bring the history up to about the date of
554, being a general account of events in different parts of the empire. It is necessary to bear in mind that the
wars described separately by Procopius overlapped one another in time, and that while the Romans were
striving to hold back the Persian aggressor they were also maintaining armies in Africa and in Italy. In fact the
Byzantine empire was making a supreme effort to re-establish the old boundaries, and to reclaim the
territories lost to the barbarian nations. The emperor Justinian was fired by the ambition to make the Roman
Empire once more a world power, and he drained every resource in his eagerness to make possible the
fulfilment of this dream. It was a splendid effort, but it was doomed to failure; the fallen edifice could not be
permanently restored.
The history is more general than the title would imply, and all the important events of the time are touched
upon. So while we read much of the campaigns against the nations who were crowding back the boundaries of
the old empire, we also hear of civic affairs such as the great Nika insurrection in Byzantium in 532; similarly
a careful account is given of the pestilence of 540, and the care shewn in describing the nature of the disease
shews plainly that the author must have had some acquaintance with the medical science of the time.
After the seventh book of the
History of the Wars
Procopius wrote the
Anecdota
, or
Secret History
. Here he
freed himself from all the restraints of respect or fear, and set down without scruple everything which he had
been led to suppress or gloss over in the
History
through motives of policy. He attacks unmercifully the
emperor and empress and even Belisarius and his wife Antonina, and displays to us one of the blackest
pictures ever set down in writing. It is a record of wanton crime and shameless debauchery, of intrigue and
scandal both in public and in private life. It is plain that the thing is overdone, and the very extravagance of
the calumny makes it impossible to be believed; again and again we meet statements which, if not absolutely
impossible, are at least highly improbable. Many of the events of the
History
are presented in an entirely new
light; we seem to hear one speaking out of the bitterness of his heart. It should be said, at the same time, that
there are very few contradictions in statements of fact. The author has plainly singled out the empress
Theodora as the principal victim of his venomous darts, and he gives an account of her early years which is
both shocking and disgusting, but which, happily, we are not forced to regard as true. It goes without saying
that such a work as this could not have been published during the lifetime of the author, and it appears that it
was not given to the world until after the death of Justinian in 565.
Serious doubts have been entertained in times past as to the authenticity of the
Anecdota
, for at first sight it
seems impossible that the man who wrote in the calm tone of the
History
and who indulged in the fulsome
praise of the panegyric
On the Buildings
could have also written the bitter libels of the
Anecdota
. It has come
to be seen, however, that this feeling is not supported by any unanswerable arguments, and it is now believed
to be highly probable at least, that the
Anecdota
is the work of Procopius. Its bitterness may be extreme and its
calumnies exaggerated beyond all reason, but it must be regarded as prompted by a reaction against the
hollow life of the Byzantine court.
The third work is entitled
On the Buildings
, and is plainly an attempt to gain favour with the emperor. We can
only guess as to what the immediate occasion was for its composition. It is plain, however, that the
publication of the
History
could not have aroused the enthusiasm of Justinian; there was no attempt in it to
praise the emperor, and one might even read an unfavourable judgment between the lines. And it is not at all
unlikely that he was moved to envy by the praises bestowed upon his general, Belisarius. At any rate the work
On the Buildings
is written in the empty style of the fawning flatterer. It is divided into six short books and
History of the Wars, Books I and II
4
contains an account of all the public buildings of Justinian's reign in every district of the empire. The subject
was well chosen and the material ample, and Procopius lost no opportunity of lauding his sovereign to the
skies. It is an excellent example of the florid panegyric style which was, unfortunately, in great favour with
the literary world of his own as well as later Byzantine times. But in spite of its faults, this work is a record of
the greatest importance for the study of the period, since it is a storehouse of information concerning the
internal administration of the empire.
The style of Procopius is in general clear and straightforward, and shews the mind of one who endeavours to
speak the truth in simple language wherever he is not under constraint to avoid it. At the same time he is not
ignorant of the arts of rhetoric, and especially in the speeches he is fond of introducing sounding phrases and
sententious statements. He was a great admirer of the classical writers of prose, and their influence is
everywhere apparent in his writing; in particular he is much indebted to the historians Herodotus and
Thucydides, and he borrows from them many expressions and turns of phrase. But the Greek which he writes
is not the pure Attic, and we find many evidences of the influence of the contemporary spoken language.
Procopius writes at times as a Christian, and at times as one imbued with the ideas of the ancient religion of
Greece. Doubtless his study of the classical writers led him into this, perhaps unconsciously. At any rate it
seems not to have been with him a matter in which even consistency was demanded. It was politic to espouse
the religion of the state, but still he often allows himself to speak as if he were a contemporary of Thucydides.
The text followed is that of Haury, issued in the Teubner series, 1905-1913.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The
editio princeps
of Procopius was published by David Hoeschel, Augsburg, 1607; the
Secret History
was
not included, and only summaries of the six books of the work
On the Buildings
were given. The edition is not
important except as being the first.
The
Secret History
was printed for the first time separately with a Latin translation by Alemannus, Lyon,
1623.
The first complete edition was that of Maltretus, Paris, 1661-63, reprinted in Venice, 1729; the edition
included a Latin translation of all the works, which was taken over into the edition of Procopius in the
Corpus
Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae
by Dindorf, Bonn, 1833-38.
Two editions of recent years are to be mentioned: Domenico Comparetti, _La Guerra Gotica di Procopio di
Cesarea_; testo Greco emendato sui manoscritti con traduxione Italiana, Rome, 1895-98; 3 vols. Jacobus
Haury,
Procopii Caesariensis Opera Omnia
, Leipzig, 1905-13; 3 vols. (Bibl. Teub.).
Among a number of works on Procopius or on special subjects connected with his writings the following may
be mentioned:
Felix Dahn: _Procopius von Cäsarea_, Berlin, 1865.
Julius Jung: _Geographisch-Historisches bei Procopius von Caesarea_, Wiener Studien 5 (1883) 85-115.
W. Gundlach:
Quaestiones Procopianae
, Progr. Hanau, 1861, also Dissert. Marburg, 1861.
J. Haury:
Procopiana
, Progr. Augsburg, 1891.
B. Pancenko:
Ueber die Geheimgeschichte des Prokop
, Viz. Vrem. 2 (1895).
History of the Wars, Books I and II
5
J. Haury:
Zur Beurteilung des Geschichtschreibers Procopius von Caesarea
, Munich, 1896-97.
1971. The Teubner edition in 4 volumes by J. Haury (1905-1913) has been re-edited by G. Wirth.
FOOTNOTE:
[1]
[Greek: xymboulos], _Proc. Bell._ I. xii. 24. He is elsewhere referred to as [Greek: paredros] or [Greek:
hypographeus].
PROCOPIUS OF CAESAREA
HISTORY OF THE WARS: BOOK I
THE PERSIAN WAR
PROCOPIUS OF CAESAREA
HISTORY OF THE WARS:
BOOK I
THE PERSIAN WAR
I
Procopius of Caesarea has written the history of the wars which Justinian, Emperor of the Romans, waged
against the barbarians of the East and of the West, relating separately the events of each one, to the end that
the long course of time may not overwhelm deeds of singular importance through lack of a record, and thus
abandon them to oblivion and utterly obliterate them. The memory of these events he deemed would be a
great thing and most helpful to men of the present time, and to future generations as well, in case time should
ever again place men under a similar stress. For men who purpose to enter upon a war or are preparing
themselves for any kind of struggle may derive some benefit from a narrative of a similar situation in history,
inasmuch as this discloses the final result attained by men of an earlier day in a struggle of the same sort, and
foreshadows, at least for those who are most prudent in planning, what outcome present events will probably
have. Furthermore he had assurance that he was especially competent to write the history of these events, if
for no other reason, because it fell to his lot, when appointed adviser to the general Belisarius, to be an
eye-witness of practically all the events to be described. It was his conviction that while cleverness is
appropriate to rhetoric, and inventiveness to poetry, truth alone is appropriate to history. In accordance with
this principle he has not concealed the failures of even his most intimate acquaintances, but has written down
with complete accuracy everything which befell those concerned, whether it happened to be done well or ill
by them.
It will be evident that no more important or mightier deeds are to be found in history than those which have
been enacted in these wars,--provided one wishes to base his judgment on the truth. For in them more
remarkable feats have been performed than in any other wars with which we are acquainted; unless, indeed,
any reader of this narrative should give the place of honour to antiquity, and consider contemporary
achievements unworthy to be counted remarkable. There are those, for example, who call the soldiers of the
present day "bowmen," while to those of the most ancient times they wish to attribute such lofty terms as
"hand-to-hand fighters," "shield-men," and other names of that sort; and they think that the valour of those
times has by no means survived to the present,--an opinion which is at once careless and wholly remote from
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