The Secret History - Procopius, The Athenian Society
Language: EnglishKeywords: 
Ancient Rome
 Belisarius
 Byzantium
 Eastern Roman Empire
 Justinian
Shared by:Euripides
Written by ,
Read by James Cameron Stewart
Format: M4A
Bitrate: Variable
Unabridged
Duration: 5 hrs and 2 mins
[Translated by The Athenian Society]
The Secret History, written by the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius, is one of the most extraordinary and scandalous documents to have survived from the early Byzantine period.
Procopius, the leading official historian of his time, lived during the testing and indulgent time of Emperor Justinian the Great and wrote the official records of the successful wars and the grand building projects of his ruler. These were words of aggrandisement. But covertly, Procopius kept a very different record: The Secret History, a vivid, salacious and detailed account of the outrageous behaviour of Justinian and his wife, Theodora, and the equally corrupt, licentious and cruel members of the court and administration of the time.
Secrecy was a necessary precaution for Procopius to prevent a painful and untimely death, for Justinian emerges as a grasping, ruthless and unprincipled ruler who would do anything to increase his wealth and power and who would not brook opposition on any level. No-one was safe around him - he was on a par with the worst Emperors of Rome such as Caligula. Theodora was no better - Procopius portrays her as a vulgar woman of insatiable sexual appetite given to scandalous displays and equally ready to kill to satisfy her desires. Not even Belisarius, the outstanding general of the time, was free from criticism: he is shown to be in thrall to his wife, Antonina, also a woman of wild habits, keen to pursue any person or object which appealed to her without let or hindrance.
This was a time, Procopius shows, when no-one in the great capital of Constantinople was safe, a time when the rule of law could be subsumed at any time according to the whim of those in power. James Cameron Stewart reads the unabridged anonymous translation published in 1896 by The Athenian Society.
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| Creation Date: | Wed, 17 Apr 2019 11:48:20 +0100 |
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This post has 4 comments with rating of 5/5
April 17th, 2019
Ah… Justinian, the precursor to Donny.
April 17th, 2019
I often wonder how differently we might see Augustus if there had been a Procopius to chronicle his actual achievements. Or how scholars might now view Justinian without this book.
It’s a timely reminder for those who imagine fake news is a recent concept.
Thank you, Euripides.
April 17th, 2019
‘Count Belisarius’ by the great Robert Graves is a grand, fictionalised account of the same events.
April 18th, 2019
Procopius says that Justinian was a demon lord who had orgies and drank people’s blood; that Theodora was a whore who performed sex acts in a circus and freely slept with everyone; etc. I haven’t read those accusations anywhere else, including other stuff Procopius wrote. It’s a very strange document!
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