The Secret History

Procopius recounts the supposed true history of Justinian's reign. A military official and chronicler under the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian, Procopius is a key primary source for historians studying Justinian's reign. In addition to writing a conventional history of Justinian's wars titled History of the Wars and a panegyric to Justinian's construction projects titled The Buildings, Procopius composed a Secret History supposedly consisting of the incidents he withheld from his previous books. In his Secret History, which was lost for centuries before it resurfaced at the Vatican Library in Rome in the 17th century, Procopius purports to unveil the celebrated Byzantine monarchs Justinian and Theodora for who they really are: corrupt, arbitrary, and literally demonic tyrants. Although considered an authentic text, its invective tone against Justinian and Theodora and its sometimes extravagant accusations (e.g. that Justinian was a demon in human form with a vanishing head) puts it in an unclear position between fiction and history. Nevertheless, the Secret History continues to be an object of study by classicists, and Procopius's purpose for composing such a scathing text remains an object of speculation. Equal parts scandalous exposé and historical puzzle, The Secret History strips away the propaganda of empire to reveal (or invent) the private vices of the rulers who built Hagia Sophia and codified Roman law. The source for this public-domain ebook is Standard Ebooks (standardebooks.org). Ebooks from other sources often have typos, inconsistent spelling, missing accent marks, and missing punctuation. Ebooks from Standard Ebooks are proofread line by line against a scan of the original printed pages, then proofread again from cover to cover. They are also formatted and typeset following a professional-grade style manual, resulting in new editions supporting state-of-the-art ereader technology: automatic hyphenation, popup footnotes, complete and consistent metadata, high-resolution and scalable vector graphics, and ereader-compatible tables of contents. All of this makes the finished ebooks accurate, functional, and beautiful, a pleasure to read. (Waking Lion Press is not affiliated with or endorsed by Standard Ebooks.)