Procopius of Caesarea (Greek: Προκόπιος ο Καισαρεύς, c. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly 500 – c. Events By Place Europe Possible date for the Battle of Mons Badonicus: Romano-British and Celts defeat an Anglo-Saxon 565) was a prominent Eastern Roman scholar of the family Procopius. Events By Place Byzantine Empire November 14 — Justin II succeeds Justinian I as Emperor The Procopii ( Procopius or Procopia in singular male/female were a family of Ancient Rome. He is commonly held to be the last major ancient historian.

Life

Other than his own writings, the main source for Procopius' life is an entry in the Suda, a 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia that tells nothing about his early life. The Suda or Souda ( also, Suidas) is a massive 10th century Byzantine Greek historical encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean An encyclopedia (or '''encyclopædia''') is a comprehensive written Compendium that contains Information on either all branches of Knowledge His birthplace is traditionally assigned to Caesarea (modern Israel). Caesarea (קיסריה Qesarya قيسارية pronounced Kaysaria) is a town in Israel on the outskirts of Caesarea Maritima, the ancient port For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Israel topics. We know, however, that he received an education in the Greek classics, knew Latin, attended law school, possibly at Berytus (modern Beirut) or Constantinople, and became a rhetor (barrister). Greece (Ελλάδα transliterated: Elláda, historically, Ellás,) officially the Hellenic Republic (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία "Classical literature" redirects here For literature in Classical languages outside the Graeco-Roman sphere see Ancient literature. Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Beirut (بيروت Bayrūt) is the Capital and Largest city of Lebanon with a population of over 2 A barrister is a Lawyer found in many Common law Jurisdictions that employ a split profession (as opposed to a Fused profession) in relation In 527, the first year of Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I's reign, he became the adsessor (legal adviser) for Belisarius, Justinian's chief military commander who was then beginning a brilliant career. For the political lobbying groups see 527 groups Events By Place Byzantine Empire April 1 — Byzantine This is a list of the Emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire, commonly known as the Byzantine Empire by modern historians Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus ( Greek: Φλάβιος Πέτρος Σαββάτιος Ιουστινιανός; known in English as Justinian I or Flavius Belisarius (Βελισάριος (505(? – 565 was one of the greatest Generals of the Byzantine Empire and one of the most acclaimed generals in history

Procopius was with Belisarius on the eastern front until the latter was defeated at the Battle of Callinicum in 531 and recalled to Constantinople. The Battle of Callinicum took place between the armies of the Eastern Roman Empire under the command of General Belisarius and Sassanid Persians under Events By Place Byzantine Empire April 19 — Belisarius is defeated at the Battle of Callinicum; Mundus Constantinople (Κωνσταντινούπολις Konstantinoúpolis, or gr ἡ Πόλις hē Polis, Latin: la CONSTANTINOPOLIS Procopius witnessed the Nika riots of January, 532, which Belisarius and his fellow general Mundo repressed with a massacre in the Hippodrome. The Nika riots (Στάση του Νίκα or Nika revolt, took place over the course of a week in Constantinople in 532. Events By Place Byzantine Empire January 11 — Nika riots in Constantinople: The cathedral is destroyed The Hippodrome of Constantinople (Sultanahmet Meydanı At Meydanı was a horse-racing track that was the sporting and social centre of Constantinople, capital of In 533, he accompanied Belisarius on his victorious expedition against the Vandal kingdom in North Africa, took part in the capture of Carthage, and remained in Africa with Belisarius' successor Solomon when Belisarius returned to Constantinople. Events By Place Byzantine Empire June 21 - Belisarius sails from Constantinople. North Africa or Northern Africa is the Northernmost Region of the African Continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan Carthage (Καρχηδών Karkhēdōn, Carthago from the Phoenician קרת חדשת phn-Latn Qart-ḥadašt meaning new town) refers Procopius recorded a few of the extreme weather events of 535-536, although these were presented as a backdrop to Byzantine military activities, such as a mutiny, in and near Carthage. Mutiny is a conspiracy among members of a group of similarly-situated individuals (typically members of the Military; or the Crew of any ship even ^[1] He rejoined Belisarius for his campaign against the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy and experienced the Gothic siege of Rome that lasted a year and nine days, ending in mid-March, 538. The Ostrogoths (Ostrogothi or Austrogothi were a branch of the Goths, an East Germanic tribe that played a major role in the political events of the late Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest Rome ( Roma ˈroma Roma is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city with more than 2 Events By Place Europe March 12 — Witiges, king of the Ostrogoths, ends his siege of Rome and retreats to He witnessed Belisarius' entry into the Gothic capital, Ravenna, in 540. Ravenna is a City and Comune in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. Events By place Byzantine Empire General Belisarius conquers Milan and the Ostrogothic capital Ravenna Book eight of "The Wars", and the Secret History, suggest that his relationship with Belisarius seems to have cooled thereafter. When Belisarius was sent back to Italy in 544 to cope with a renewal of the war with the Goths, now led by the able king Totila, Procopius appears to have no longer been on Belisarius' staff. Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest Events By Place Byzantine Empire Belisarius is sent back to Italy to once more fight the Ostrogoths who have Totila (died Jul 1 552) was king of the Ostrogoths from 541 until his death

We do not know when Procopius himself died, and many historians (James Howard-Johnson, Averil Cameron, Geoffrey Greatrex) date his death to 554, but in 562 there was an urban prefect of Constantinople who happened to be called Procopius. James Howard-Johnston is an English historian of the Byzantine Empire. Dame Averil Millicent Cameron, DBE, FBA (born February 8, 1940) is Warden of Keble College Oxford, Professor of Late Antique and Events By Place Byzantine Empire General Narses reconquers all of Italy Events By Place Byzantine Empire Belisarius stands trial for corruption in Constantinople, possibly with Prefect (from the Latin praefectus, perfect participle of praeficere: "make in front" i Constantinople (Κωνσταντινούπολις Konstantinoúpolis, or gr ἡ Πόλις hē Polis, Latin: la CONSTANTINOPOLIS In that year, Belisarius was implicated in a conspiracy and was brought before this urban prefect.

Writings

The writings of Procopius are the primary source of information for the rule of the Roman emperor Justinian. Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus ( Greek: Φλάβιος Πέτρος Σαββάτιος Ιουστινιανός; known in English as Justinian I or Procopius was the author of a history in eight books of the wars fought by Justinian I, a panegyric on Justinian's public works throughout the empire, and a book known as the Secret History (Greek: Anekdota) that claims to report the scandals that Procopius could not include in his published history. Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus ( Greek: Φλάβιος Πέτρος Σαββάτιος Ιουστινιανός; known in English as Justinian I or A panegyric is a formal public speech, or (in later use written verse delivered in high praise of a Person or thing, a generally highly studied and discriminating Public works are the construction or engineering projects carried out by the State on behalf of the Community. A secret history (or shadow history) is a revisionist interpretation of either fictional or real (or known History which is claimed to have been deliberately

Justinian's Wars

Although it is not as famous as the Secret History, Procopius' History of the Wars is clearly his most important work. The first seven books, which were published as a unit, seem to have been largely completed by 545, but were updated to mid-century before publication, for the latest event mentioned belongs to early 551. Events By Place Byzantine Empire The Ostrogoths besiege Rome. Events By Place Byzantine Empire Beirut is destroyed by an Earthquake and Tsunami. Later, Procopius added an eighth book which brings the history to 552/553, when a Roman army led by the eunuch Narses finally destroyed the Ostrogothic kingdom. Events By Place Europe Battle of Asfeld: Longobards under king Audoin defeat the Gepids. Events By Place Europe The Ostrogoth Kingdom is conquered by the Byzantines after the Battle of Mons Lactarius A eunuch (ˈjuːnək is a Castrated man in particular one castrated early enough to have major hormonal consequences the term usually refers to those castrated in order to For other historical figures with similar names see Narses (disambiguation.

Secret History

The famous Secret History was discovered centuries later in the Vatican Library and published in 1623, but its existence was already known from the Suda, which referred to it as the Anekdota ("the unpublished composition"). The Vatican Library ( Latin: Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana) is the Library of the Holy See, currently located in Vatican City. The Suda or Souda ( also, Suidas) is a massive 10th century Byzantine Greek historical encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean The Secret History covers roughly the same years as the first seven books of the History of Justinian's Wars and appears to have been written after they were published. Current consensus generally dates it to 550 or 558, or maybe even as late as 562. Events By place Byzantine Empire January 16 — Gothic War (535–552: The Ostrogoths, under King Totila Events By Place Byzantine Empire May 7 — In Constantinople, the dome of the Hagia Sophia collapses Events By Place Byzantine Empire Belisarius stands trial for corruption in Constantinople, possibly with

The Secret History reveals an author who had become deeply disillusioned with the emperor Justinian and his wife, Theodora, as well as Belisarius, his old commander, and Antonina, Belisarius' wife. Theodora ( Greek: Θεοδώρα (c 500 - June 28 548) was empress of the Byzantine Empire and the wife of Emperor Justinian The anecdotes claim to expose the secret springs of their public actions, as well as the private lives of the Emperor, his wife, and their entourage. Justinian is raked over the coals as cruel, venal, prodigal and incompetent; as for Theodora, the reader is treated to the most detailed and titillating portrayals of vulgarity and insatiable lust combined with shrewish and calculating mean-spiritedness.

Among the more titillating (and doubtful) revelations in the Secret History is Procopius' account of Empress Theodora's thespian accomplishments:

Often, even in the theater, in the sight of all the people, she removed her costume and stood nude in their midst, except for a girdle about the groin: not that she was abashed at revealing that, too, to the audience, but because there was a law against appearing altogether naked on the stage, without at least this much of a fig-leaf. Covered thus with a ribbon, she would sink down to the stage floor and recline on her back. Slaves to whom the duty was entrusted would then scatter grains of barley from above into the calyx of this passion flower, whence geese, trained for the purpose, would next pick the grains one by one with their bills and eat.

Her husband Justinian, meanwhile, was literally losing his head, at least according to this passage:

And some of those who have been with Justinian at the palace late at night, men who were pure of spirit, have thought they saw a strange demoniac form taking his place. One man said that the Emperor suddenly rose from his throne and walked about, and indeed he was never wont to remain sitting for long, and immediately Justinian's head vanished, while the rest of his body seemed to ebb and flow; whereat the beholder stood aghast and fearful, wondering if his eyes were deceiving him. But presently he perceived the vanished head filling out and joining the body again as strangely as it had left it. ^[2]

De Aedificiis

The first book of Procopius' Peri ktismaton ("On Buildings"), a panegyric of Justinian's building activity in the empire, may date to before the collapse of the first dome of Hagia Sophia in 557, but some scholars (for example Michael Whitby) think that it is possible that the work postdates the building of the bridge over the Sangarius in the late 550s. A panegyric is a formal public speech, or (in later use written verse delivered in high praise of a Person or thing, a generally highly studied and discriminating Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya Αγία Σοφία " Holy Wisdom " Sancta Sophia or Sancta Sapientia) is a former patriarchal Basilica, later Events By Place Asia The Northern Zhou Dynasty begins in northern China; its first ruler is Northern Zhou Xiao Min Di The Sakarya ( Greek Σαγγάριος, Latinized as Sangarius) is a River in Asia Minor. Events and Trends 554, Eviction of the Ostrogoths from Rome and the re-unification of all Italy under Imperial rule The Peri ktismaton (or De Aedificiis) tells us nothing further about Belisarius, but it takes a sharply different attitude towards Justinian. He is presented as an idealised Christian emperor who built churches for the glory of God and defenses for the safety of his subjects and who showed particular concern for the water supply. Christianity ( Greek Χριστιανισμός from the word Xριστός ( Christ)is a monotheistic Religion centered on the life and teachings God is the principal or sole Deity in Religions and other belief systems that worship one deity. Theodora, who was dead when this panegyric was written, is mentioned only briefly, but Procopius' praise of her beauty is fulsome. The panegyric was likely written at Justinian's behest, however, and we may doubt if its sentiments are sincere.

Context

Procopius belongs to the school of late antique secular historians who continued the traditions of the Second Sophistic; they wrote in Attic Greek, their models were Herodotus and especially Thucydides, and their subject matter was secular history. Late Antiquity (c 300-600 is a Periodization used by historians to describe the transitional centuries from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in The Second Sophistic is a literary-historical term referring to the Greek writers who flourished from the reign of Nero until c Attic Greek is the Prestige dialect of Ancient Greece that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly Herodotus of Halicarnassus ( Greek: Hēródotos Halikarnāsseús) was a Greek Historian who lived in the 5th century BC ( 484 BC&ndash Thucydides ( C 460 BC &ndash C 395 BC) ( Greek Θουκυδίδης Thoukydídēs) was a Greek They avoided vocabulary unknown to Attic Greek and would insert an explanation when they had to use contemporary words. Thus Procopius explains to his readers that ekklesia, meaning a Christian church, is the equivalent of a temple or shrine and that monks are "the most temperate of Christians. A temple (from the Latin word Templum) is a structure reserved for religious or spiritual activities such as prayer and sacrifice or analogous rites A shrine, from the Latin scrinium (‘box’ also used as a desk like the French bureau) was originally a container usually made of precious materials used MONK is a Monte Carlo software package for simulating nuclear processes particularly for the purpose of determining the neutron multiplication factor or k-effective . . whom men are accustomed to call monks. " (Wars 2. 9. 14; 1. 7. 22) In classical Athens, monks had been unknown and an ekklesia was the assembly of Athenian citizens which passed the laws. Athens (ˈæθənz Αθήνα Athina,) the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery as one of the world's

The secular historians eschewed the history of the Christian church, which they left to ecclesiastical history—a genre that was founded by Eusebius of Caesarea. However, Averil Cameron has argued convincingly that Procopius' works reflect the tensions between the classical and Christian models of history in 6th century Byzantium. Dame Averil Millicent Cameron, DBE, FBA (born February 8, 1940) is Warden of Keble College Oxford, Professor of Late Antique and This article is about the city See also Byzantine Empire. Byzantium ( Greek: Βυζάντιον Latin: la BYZANTIVM Procopius indicated (Secret History 26. 18) that he planned to write an ecclesiastical history himself and, if he had, he would probably have followed the rules of that genre. But, as far as we know, the ecclesiastical history remained unwritten.

A historical novel based on Procopius' works (along with other sources), Count Belisarius, was written by poet and novelist Robert Graves in 1938. An historical novel is a Novel in which the story is set among historical events or more generally in which the time of the action predates the lifetime of the Author Count Belisarius is a Historical novel by Robert Graves, first published in 1938 recounting the life of the Byzantine general Belisarius Robert Graves (24 July 1895 &ndash 7 December 1985 was an English Poet, Translator and Novelist. Year 1938 ( MCMXXXVIII) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar.

Further reading

• Börm, Henning: Prokop und die Perser. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007.
• Brodka, Dariusz: Die Geschichtsphilosophie in der spätantiken Historiographie. Studien zu Prokopios von Kaisareia, Agathias von Myrina und Theophylaktos Simokattes. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004.
• Cameron, Averil: Procopius and the Sixth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
• Evans, James A. S. : Procopius. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972.
• Greatrex, Geoffrey: The dates of Procopius' works; in: BMGS 18 (1994), 101-114.
• Greatrex, Geoffrey: Recent work on Procopius and the composition of Wars VIII; in: BMGS 27 (2003), 45-67.
• Kaldellis, Anthony: Procopius of Caesarea: Tyranny, History and Philosophy at the End of Antiquity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
• Martindale, John: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire III, Cambridge 1992, 1060–1066. Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (usually abbreviated as PLRE) is a set of three volumes collectively describing every person attested or claimed
• Meier, Mischa: Prokop, Agathias, die Pest und das ′Ende′ der antiken Historiographie, in: Historische Zeitschrift 278 (2004), 281–310.
• Rubin, Berthold: Prokopios, in: RE 23/1 (1957), 273–599. The Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, commonly called the "Pauly-Wissowa", is a German Encyclopedia of
• Treadgold, Warren: The Early Byzantine Historians, Basingstoke 2007, 176-226.

List of selected works

• Procopii Caesariensis opera omnia. Edited by J. Haury; revised by G. Wirth. 3 vols. Leipzig: Teubner, 1976-64. Greek text.
• Procopius. Edited by H. B. Dewing. 7 vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press and London, Hutchinson, 1914-40. Greek text and English translation.
• Procopius, The Secret History, translated by G. A. Williamson. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966. A readable and accessible English translation of the Anecdota.

References

External links

Texts of Procopius

• Complete Works, Greek text (Migne Patrologia Graeca) with analytical indexes
• The Secret History, English translation (Atwater, 1927) at the Internet Medieval Sourcebook
• The Secret History, English translation (Dewing, 1935) at LacusCurtius
• The Buildings, English translation (Dewing, 1935) at LacusCurtius
• The Buildings, Book IV Greek text with commentaries, index nominum, etc. The Patrologia Graeca (or Patrologiae Cursus Completus Series Graeca is an edited collection of writings by the Christian Church Fathers and various secular LacusCurtius is a Website specializing in Ancient Rome, currently hosted on a server at the University of Chicago. at Sorin Olteanu's LTDM Project
• Works by Procopius at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Procopius in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Secondary material

•   "Procopius of Caesarea". Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to Digitize, archive and distribute Cultural works WorldCat is a Union catalog which itemizes the collections of more than 10000 libraries which participate in the OCLC global cooperative Catholic Encyclopedia. The Catholic Encyclopedia, also referred to today as the Old Catholic Encyclopedia, is an English-language Encyclopedia published by The Encyclopedia (1913). New York: Robert Appleton Company.  
• Entry for Procopius from the Suda, courtesy of the Suda online. The Suda or Souda ( also, Suidas) is a massive 10th century Byzantine Greek historical encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean

This article is based on an earlier version by James Allan Evans, originally posted at Nupedia. Nupedia was an English-language Web-based Encyclopedia whose articles were written by experts and licensed as Free content.