History of the Wars, Books I and II - Procopius

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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 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.

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      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).

      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.

      ξύμβουλος, Proc. Bell. I. xii. 24. He is elsewhere referred to as πάρεδρος or ύπογραφεύς.

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      HISTORY OF THE WARS: BOOK I

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      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 actual experience of these matters. For the thought has never occurred to them that, as regards the Homeric bowmen who had the misfortune to be ridiculed by this term[1] derived from their art, they were neither carried by horse nor protected by spear or shield.[2] In fact there was

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