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Updated: May 26, 2025
Without proper sifting and a reasonable skepticism, he has incorporated into his narrative the questionable account with all its salacious details which Procopius gives in his Secret History, Gibbon's love of a scandalous tale getting the better of his historical criticism. He has not neglected to urge a defense.
At the dawn of day they were drawn up near the baths of Anastasia; and Procopius, clothed in a purple garment, more suitable to a player than to a monarch, appeared, as if he rose from the dead, in the midst of Constantinople. The soldiers, who were prepared for his reception, saluted their trembling prince with shouts of joy and vows of fidelity.
Now when Procopius reached Syracuse, he unexpectedly met a man who had been a fellow-citizen and friend of his from childhood, who had been living in Syracuse for a long time engaged in the shipping business, and he learned from him what he wanted; for this man showed him a domestic who had three days before that very day come from Carthage, and he said that they need not suspect that there would be any ambush set for the fleet by the Vandals.
Procopius is their patron. Only the Bora disturbs their retail trade; for the swift current through the Iron Gate drives the rowing-boats toward the southern shore. Of course smuggling is done by tow-boats too, but that belongs to wholesale traffic, costs more than friendly business, and so is not for poor people: in them not only salt, but also tobacco and coffee are smuggled across the frontier.
The weary Romans indulged themselves in the refreshment of shady groves, cool fountains, and delicious fruits; and the preference which Procopius allows to these gardens over any that he had seen, either in the East or West, may be ascribed either to the taste, or the fatigue, or the historian.
And then began that dreadful East Goth war, which you may read for yourselves in the pages of an eye-witness, Procopius; a war which destroyed utterly the civilization of Dietrich's long and prosperous reign, left Italy a desert, and exterminated the Roman people. That was the last woe: but of it I must tell you in my next Lecture.
As early as the fourth campaign, under the discipline of Belisarius himself, fifty thousand laborers died of hunger in the narrow region of Picenum; and a strict interpretation of the evidence of Procopius would swell the loss of Italy above the total sum of her present inhabitants. I desire to believe, but I dare not affirm, that Belisarius sincerely rejoiced in the triumph of Narses.
According to the vicissitudes of courage or servitude, of favor or disgrace, Procopius successively composed the history, the panegyric, and the satire of his own times.
He continued at once on his way to Ravenna, and there in the court before all the Gothic nobles not only denounced the murderer, but declared "truceless war" upon the Goths. Procopius, De Bello Gotico, 25. The murder of Amalasuntha served the interests of the imperialists so well that public opinion at Constantinople attributed it to Peter the ambassador and to Theodora, the wife of Justinian.
'He cut out the tongues by the roots, says Victor, Bishop of Vito; 'I perceived the tongues entirely gone by the roots, says Æneas; 'as low down as the throat, says Procopius; 'at the roots, say Justinian and St.
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