Justinus

“ But swear, says Justinus, if you wish to know “what eye hath not seen, and ear hath not heard, and the things which have not entered into the heart;” [1] that is, if you wish to know Him who is good above all, Him who is more exalted, (swear) that you will preserve the secrets (of the Justinian) discipline, as intended to be kept silent. For also our Father, on beholding the Good One, and on being initiated with Him, preserved the mysteries respecting which silence is enjoined, and sware, as it has been written, “The Lord sware, and will not repent.” ”

“ Seth; for all their secrets he will find there enshrined. [278] But since we have set forth the things of the p. 224. Sethians [279] let us see also what Justinus thinks.
4. Justinus. [280]
23. Justinus, being utterly opposed to every teaching of [170] the Holy Scriptures, and also to the writing or speech [281] of the blessed Evangelists, since the Word taught his disciples saying: “Go not into the way of the Gentiles” [282] —which is plainly: Give no heed to the vain teaching of the Gentiles—seeks to bring back his hearers to the marvel-mongering of the Greeks and what is taught by it. ”

“ Sonhood to the presence of the Father above, from whom the first Sonhood proceeded. [34] And they declare that the cosmos [161] shall endure until all the souls together with the Sonhood shall withdraw [from it] . And Basilides is not ashamed to narrate these portents. [35]
p. 494. 7. Justinus. [36]
15. Justinus also daring to [advance] things like these, says thus: “There are three unbegotten principles of the universals, two male [and] one female.” Of the male, one is a certain principle called the Good, and is alone thus called, having foreknowledge of the universals. ”

“ It only remains to say something regarding Justinian’s personal character and capacities, with regard to which a great diversity of opinion has existed among historians. The civilians, looking on him as a patriarch of their science, have as a rule extolled his wisdom and virtues; while ecclesiastics of the Roman Church, from Cardinal Baronius downwards, have been offended by his arbitrary conduct towards the popes, and by his last lapse into heresy, and have therefore been disposed to accept the stories which ascribe to him perfidy, cruelty, rapacity and extravagance. ”

“ Justinian died at the advanced age of eighty-three. He was not a great emperor, but he had the sagacity to select the best officers. He was a prodigy of industry; in an age of curiously active intellectual energy, he was philosopher, poet, musician, architect, lawyer, and theologian.
It was in all a most remarkable and illustrious reign—one in which many great questions seemed settled decisively, though none were. Vandals, Goths, Persians, Bulgarians, all were driven back before the "Roman" arms, and nature herself added phenomena to mark the epoch. ”

“ The reign of Justinian. After Anastasius, came Justin I., born a peasant in Dacia (modern Roumania) , but advanced as a soldier to the command of the imperial guards, and thence to the throne. He had already adopted and educated his nephew, Justinian, and before dying, in 527, he invested him with sovereignty as a colleague. The reign of Justinian was the most remarkable in the whole history of the Empire in the East. Without breadth of understanding, or notable talents of any kind: without courage; without the least nobility of character ”

“ Justinian governed the Roman Empire for thirty-eight years (527-565) , and great and curious events occurred in his time. The Empress Theodora was daughter of an official called the Master of the Bears, and took to the stage in her youth. Her forte was not to sing or dance or play on the flute, but to act in pantomime and buffoonery, her eyes being bright, and her agile and elegant form drawing down endless applause. She captivated the nephew of the Emperor Justin, young Justinian, whom she married, and she maintained an ascendency over him to the last. ”

“ Others, who were free from all these cares and anxieties, were puzzled to think what had become of the wealth and treasures of the Empire. Some declared that it had all fallen into the hands of the barbarians, while others asserted that the Emperor kept it locked up in secret hiding-places of his own. When Justinian—whether he be man or devil—shall have departed this life, those who are then living will be able to learn the truth. ”

“ Least of all can I sketch Justinian the Great, the half-Teuton peasant, whom his uncle Justin sent for out of the Dardanian hills, to make him a demigod upon earth. Men whispered in after years that he was born of a demon, a demon himself, passing whole days without food, wandering up and down his palace corridors all night, resolving dark things, and labouring all day with Herculean force to carry them out. ”

“ He was a faithless friend, an inexorable foe, and mad for murder and plunder; quarrelsome and revolutionary, easily led to do evil, never persuaded to act rightly, he was quick to contrive and carry out what was evil, but loathed even to hear of good actions.
How could any man fully describe Justinian's character? He had all these vices and other even greater ones, in larger proportion than any man; indeed, Nature seemed to have taken away all other men's vices and to have implanted them all in this man's breast. ”

“ It is said that Justinian's mother told some of her intimates that Justinian was not the son of Sabbatius, her husband, or of any human being; but that, at the time when she became pregnant, an unseen demon companied with her, whom she only felt as when a man has connection with a woman, and who then vanished away as in a dream.
Some who have been in Justinian's company in the palace very late at night, men with a clear conscience, have thought that in his place they have beheld a strange and devilish form. ”

“ Real warfare among the Grecian states was often on a less extensive scale. Justinian’s display cost about £150,000, his first considerable draught on the savings of Anastasius.
[1123] Const. Porph., De Them., i, 12.
[1124] Procopius, De Aedific., i, 4; Codinus, p. 87; see p. 37. cf. Chron. Paschal., an. 605
[1125] A history of the reign of Justin is enumerated among the works of Hesychius of Miletus, but nothing remains to us but the jottings, more or less brief, of the chroniclers. Nicephorus Callistus (c. 1400) has rolled into one nearly all previous Church historians. ”

“ Justinian, possessed by large ideas and intoxicated with the majesty of Rome, aspired to be a great conqueror, a great lawgiver, a great pontiff, a great diplomatist, a great builder, and in each of these spheres his reign holds a conspicuous place in the annals of the Empire. His legal work alone, or the building of Santa Sophia was enough to ensure him immortal fame. But deep shadows balance the splendour. The reconquest of Africa was thoroughly justified and advantageous, but Italy was bought at a ruinous cost. ”

“ An Imperial Proclus would doubtless have emulated the example of the Emperor Julian and aimed at the suppression of Christianity. Justinian was a devout student of the Nicene theology, and arrogated to himself the chief place among the doctors of the Church. [173] He was naturally proclive to fanaticism, and {434} it could scarcely be expected that his mind would be less warped by his restricted studies than that of the Pagan philosopher, nor that he would display a tolerant disposition on finding himself in the seat of power. ”

“ On a Sunday, the eleventh day of the month, Justinian, with the customary pomp, took his seat in the Cathisma. [253] A protest against the administration had been previously concerted, and the Greens, as being frankly discountenanced by the Emperor, were most forward to evince their hostility. At first a respectful tone was adopted, and the Autocrator was acclaimed with the usual formulas, "Many years to Justinian Augustus! May you be victorious!" The Greens then raised a cry that the people were oppressed, and prayed to be delivered from their sufferings. ”

“ As the reward of his services, Justinian bestowed upon him the title of "Illustrious" (Illustris) , given to the highest class of public officials, raised him to the rank of a Senator, and, finally, appointed him Praefect of Byzantium in 562. He does not, however, seem to have been altogether satisfied: he complains of having been ill-paid for his labours; for several years he was even without employment. This is all that is known of his life. He died shortly before or after the end of the reign of Justinian (565) , when he would have been over sixty years of age. ”

“ THE ARCHITECTURAL WORK OF JUSTINIAN WHILST it is evident that the distinctive character of Justinian impelled him to be incessantly active in every branch of the monarchical profession, the devastation wrought at Constantinople by the Nika rebellion might have awakened a passion for building in the breast of the most phlegmatic Emperor. [459] A mass of sightless ruins had taken the place of those architectural adornments which are the essential feature of a capital and the foundations of the dignity of a throne. ”

“ For he lavished wealth extravagantly upon the Huns who from time to time came across and, ever afterwards, the Roman provinces were subjected to constant incursions; for these barbarians, having once tasted our wealth, could not tear themselves away from the road which led to it. Justinian also threw away great sums upon the construction of large moles, as if he thought to restrain the force of the never-resting waves. He ran out stone breakwaters from the beach far into the water to divert the currents of the ocean, and, as it were, to match his wealth against the power of the sea. ”

“ Justinian worked for the progress of the world when he codified Roman law. It was unfortunate that military ambition led him to exhaust his treasury and overtax his subjects, in order that he might establish his rule over the whole of Europe like Theodosius and Constantine. Besides carrying on an almost continuous war with the King of Persia, he sent an army and fleet under an able general, Belisarius, to fight against the Vandals in North Africa; and so successful was this campaign that Justinian became master of the whole coast-line, and even of a part of southern Spain. ”

“ Thus did Theodora, as I have told you, in spite of her birth and bringing-up, reach the throne without finding any obstacle in her way. Justinian felt no shame at having wedded her, although he might have chosen the best born, the best educated, the most modest and virtuously nurtured virgin in all the Roman Empire, with outstanding breasts, as the saying is; whereas he preferred to take to himself the common refuse of all mankind, and without a thought of all that has been told, married a woman stained with the shame of many abortions and many other crimes. ”

“ Now for Justinian it was rather easy to manage everything, not only because of his easy-going disposition, but also because he rarely slept, as has been stated, and was the most accessible person in the world. For even men of low estate and altogether obscure had complete freedom, not merely to come before this tyrant, but also to converse with him and to enjoy confidential relations with him. ”

“ The insolence which we have suffered from these Goths must be smothered in blood. Perhaps I have not always been such a faithful wife as Justinian believed; but I was always his best and truest adviser. Belisarius and Narses cannot be sent together, and still less singly, to Italy. You shall go. You are a hero, a general, and a statesman, and yet you are too weak to harm Justinian. ”

“ See CIRCUS, FACTIONS OF THE ROMAN. Yet it seemed for a while like the revival of the power and fortune of Rome. Justinian rose to the highest ideas of imperial ambition; and he was served by two great masters of war, foreigners in origin like himself, Belisarius the Thracian, and Narses the Armenian, who were able to turn to full account the resources, still enormous, of the empire, its immense riches, its technical and mechanical skill, its supplies of troops, its military traditions, its command of the sea. Africa was wrested from the Vandals ”

“ When, after 33 years of rule, Theodorich expired in 526, and Justinian speedily succeeded his uncle, Justin I., the Gothic rule showed evident signs that it had been built up by the extraordinary skill and energy of a single man, but had entirely failed to assimilate the Roman and the Gothic elements in a stable union. When Justinian conquered the northern provinces of Africa, and Rome, the old seat of the empire, by the arm of Belisarius, he was, in his own mind, only recovering his own, and reassuming what Zeno and Anastasius had lent to Odoacer and Theodorich. ”

“ CHAPTER XIX A dream relating to Justinian's avarice—The vast treasures of Anastasius squandered by Justinian—He makes himself master of the fortunes of private individuals by false accusations, and squanders them in presents of money to the barbarians, who plunder the Empire—Fulfilment of the dream. ”

“ The above are, described as briefly as possible, the works of the Emperor Justinian in the imperial city. I will now describe the only thing which remains. Since the Emperor dwells here, a multitude of men of all nations comes into the city from all the world, in consequence of the vast extent of the empire, each one of them led thither either by business, by hope, or by chance, many of whom, whose affairs at home have fallen into disorder, come with the intention of offering some petition to the Emperor. ”