History of the Wars, Volume III by Procopius

Both the Wars and the Secret History suggest that his relationship with Belisarius cooled thereafter. He witnessed Belisarius's entry into the Gothic capital, Ravenna, in 540. 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. 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 around Carthage. 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's successor Solomon the Eunuch when Belisarius returned east to the capital. Procopius witnessed the Nika riots of January, 532, which Belisarius and his fellow general Mundus repressed with a massacre in the Hippodrome. Procopius was with Belisarius on the eastern front until the latter was defeated at the Battle of Callinicum in 531 and recalled to Constantinople. In 527, the first year of the reign of the emperor Justinian I, he became the legal adviser ( adsessor) for Belisarius, a general whom Justinian made his chief military commander in a great attempt to restore control over the lost western provinces of the empire. He evidently knew Latin, as was natural for a man with legal training. He may have attended law school, possibly at Berytus (present-day Beirut) or Constantinople (now Istanbul), and became a lawyer ( rhetor). He would have received a conventional upper class education in the Greek classics and rhetoric, perhaps at the famous school at Gaza. He was a native of Caesarea in the province of Palaestina Prima. Accompanying the Roman general Belisarius in Emperor Justinian's wars, Procopius became the principal Roman historian of the 6th century, writing the History of the Wars, the Buildings, and the Secret History.Īpart from his own writings, the main source for Procopius's life was an entry in the Suda, a Byzantine Greek encyclopaedia written sometime after 975 which discusses his early life. 500 – 565) was a prominent late antique Greek scholar and historian from Caesarea Maritima.

Procopius of Caesarea ( Greek: Προκόπιος ὁ Καισαρεύς Prokópios ho Kaisareús Latin: Procopius Caesariensis c.

History of the Wars, Volume III by Procopius