Imperial plight
PETER HEATHER is swept along by a vibrant new biography of the eastern Roman emperor Justinian, whose reign was marked by conquest, conflict and, ultimately, deadly plague
Some readers will be familiar with Justinian – or at least with the unforgettable caricatures sketched by the sixth-century historian Procopius of the eastern Roman emperor, his wife and his astonishing victories. With this new book, though, Peter Sarris triumphantly delivers a highly intelligent and up-to-date account of a tumultuous reign. He covers Justinian’s rise from nowhere, his scandalous marriage, his conquests in north Africa, Italy and Spain. And he explores the periodic political resistance that punctuated Justinian’s reign – one outbreak in Constantinople killed 20,000 and burned out the city centre – and his occasionally disastrous wars against Persia.
Sarris’s writing is expertly crafted, a well-judged blend of overview and detail. I particularly enjoyed glimpses of personal experience worked into the narrative: the author’s visits to the site of Justiniana Prima, now in southern Serbia; to the surviving mosaics of the imperial palace in Istanbul; and to the ancient map of the Holy Land surviving in the remains of a Byzantine church in Madaba, Jordan.
The book’s chief contribution, though, lies in deep dives into less familiar territory. Sarris is uniquely qualified here, having spent his career immersed in less-trawled blocks of evidence: in caches of Egyptian papyri and the massive collection of new laws (Novels) issued by Justinian. From these materials, Sarris conjures a vivid account of the emperor’s policies at work in the provinces, and a much fuller picture of his personality. For the first time, we glimpse a more-rounded Justinian – driven to distraction by administrative corruption, and concerned throughout with details of theology – who begins to emerge from the confines of Procopian hostility.
The book also features Sarris’s personal Justinian in another important sense. Mostly written during the isolation of the Covid-19
We glimpse a Justinian driven to distraction by administrative corruption, and concerned throughout with details of theology
pandemic, at its heart lies another famous epidemic: the Justinianic (bubonic) plague of the 540s. This enables Sarris to share with his readers more than they will find elsewhere. His account of the plague, and of the partial veiling of the sun that preceded it, is thoroughly informed by a recent rush of data and analysis. For Sarris, that plague was no isolated catastrophe, but prompted an economic downturn that made it increasingly difficult to maintain the armies necessary to keep the empire together in Justinian’s later years and beyond.
This is an important argument, but not the only way to approach the problematic legacies of Justinian’s reign. My only criticism of the book is levelled at the part of the story that, I suspect, interests Sarris the least: the military history surrounding the wars of conquest. His book lacks a real sense of how much these wars stretched the empire: the disastrous losses to Persia of 540/41, stemming from the commitment of so many elite troops to Italy; and the lengthy insurgencies in Africa and Italy that flourished when those formations reverted east, leaving insufficient cash to pay the western garrisons left behind.
Not every epidemic kills like the Black Death, bringing structural change in its wake, and current evidence is inconclusive that the Justinianic plague did so. An alternative possibility is that the emperor’s really toxic legacy wasn’t bacterial but a new emphasis on expensive expansionary campaigning as the path to imperial greatness.
Peter Heather is professor of medieval history at King’s College London. His latest book is Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion (Penguin, 2022)