Proconsul

“ When the number of Roman provinces had become great, it was customary for the consuls, who during the latter period of the republic spent the year of their consulship at Rome, to undertake at its close the conduct of a war in a province, or its peaceful administration, with the title of proconsuls. There are some extraordinary cases on record in which a man obtained a province with the title of proconsul without having held the consulship before. The first case of this kind occurred in B.C. 211, when young P. Cornelius Scipio was created proconsul of Spain in the comitia centuriata. ”

“ The proconsul said, ‘Persuade the people.’ But Polycarp said, ‘As for thee, I thought thee worthy of an explanation; for we have been taught to render to princes and authorities ordained by God the honor that is due, [18] so long as it does not injure us; [19] but as for these, I do not esteem them the proper persons to whom to make my defense.’ [20]
23. But the proconsul said, ‘I have wild beasts; I will throw thee to them unless thou repent.’ But he said, ‘Call them; for repentance from better to worse is a change we cannot make. ”

“ They lived together in admirable harmony and mutual affection; each giving the preference to the other; a conduct equally laudable in both, except that a greater degree of praise is due to a good wife, in proportion as a bad one deserves the greater censure. The lot of questorship gave him Asia for his province, and the proconsul Salvius Titianus [135] for his superior; by neither of which circumstances was he corrupted, altho the province was [215] wealthy and open to plunder, and the proconsul, from his rapacious disposition, would readily have agreed to a mutual concealment of guilt. ”

“ In the provinces the quaestors had the same jurisdiction as the curule aediles at Rome. The relation existing between a praetor or proconsul of a province and his quaestor was, according to ancient custom, regarded as resembling that between a father and his son. When a quaestor died in his province, the praetors had the right of appointing a proquaestor in his stead; and when the praetor was absent, the quaestor supplied his place, and was then attended by lictors. ”

“ He was quaestor in 113, and praetor in 104, and received the province of Cilicia with the title of proconsul in order to prosecute the war against the pirates. In consequence of his successes he obtained a triumph in 102. (Plut. Pomp. 24; Fast. Triumph.) ”

“ And he, on the one hand loving her, and on the other ashamed of what had happened, led her before the proconsul; and as she confessed that she had done these things, he condemned her to the wild beasts < Alexander arranging the games >. [47] The women of the city cried out beside the tribunal, "Evil judgment! impious judgment!" And Thecla [48] asked the proconsul to be let alone until she shall fight with the wild beasts. And a rich woman [of royal descent] [49] named Tryphaena, whose daughter [50] was dead, took her into keeping and had her for a consolation. ”

“ These particular names of prætor and consul he continued in Italy, and spoke of all officials outside as governing as their representatives. He caused the class of his own choosing to employ the title of proprætor and to hold office for as much longer than a year as should please him, wearing the military costume and having a sword with which they are empowered to punish soldiers. No one else, proconsul or proprætor or procurator, who is not empowered to kill a soldier, has been given the privilege of wearing a sword. ”

“ When the amphitheatre was filled with people, Maximus also came to witness the play, and in the first act of it, when many wild beasts were let out at the same time, many human bodies were devoured. We Christians kept ourselves concealed and waited with great fear for the bringing forth of the martyrs. Suddenly the Proconsul commanded the soldiers to bring in the Christian martyrs, namely, Tharacus, Probus, and Andronicus. The soldiers compelled some to carry the Christian martyrs on their shoulders, for they were torn and lacerated to such a degree, that they could not walk. ”

“ The system of administration was thoroughly remodelled. The Sullan proconsuls and propraetors had been in their provinces essentially sovereign and practically subject to no control; those of Caesar were the well-disciplined servants of a stern master, who from the very unity and life-tenure of his power sustained a more natural and more tolerable relation to the subjects than those numerous, annually changing, petty tyrants. ”

“ Saint Proculus was the fourth bishop of Verona. During the persecution waged by Dioclesian and Maximian against the Church, Anulinus the consul came to Milan breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the faithful. And when he had laid his hands on SS. Firmus and Rusticus, the holy bishop Proculus went to them into their prison to encourage them to strive manfully for436 Christ. ”

“ All the evidence, for Procopius, leads to the conclusion that Justinian was not merely influenced by evil demons, but actually was the Lord of Demons incarnate, allowed for a season to harass the human race. The charges against Justinian are, for the most part, futile, and arose from misguided zeal and a complete failure to understand the rapidly developing factors which already were transforming the narrow sectionalism of the ancient world into the confused pattern of mediaevalism, as a preparation for the realignment and widened horizons of the modern world. ”

“ When Proculus discovered the plot, he effected his escape. Upon this Rufinus, who thought him an active person, and feared lest he should invent some mode of giving him uneasiness, went to his father Tatianus, and by deceitful oaths induced him to believe all that he said. He even persuaded the emperor to give both the father and son the most favourable hopes; until he had thus deluded Tatianus from a well-grounded suspicion into vain thoughts of security, and induced him by letters to recall his son. But as soon as Proculus arrived, he was seized and thrown into prison. ”

“ Proclus, it must be remembered, was so eminent for his wisdom and powers as to be regarded by his contemporaries with a veneration approaching to adoration. Says Proclus, "Hermes, as the messenger of God, reveals to us His paternal Will, and—developing in us the Intuition—imparts to us knowledge. The knowledge which descends into the soul from above, excels any that can be attained by the mere exercise of the intellect. ”

“ The numerous and varied heresies which had developed already are themselves sufficient evidence of the important place which Christianity held in the consciousness of the people. The Arian heresy had been definitely condemned by the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) , but it was not extinguished by an edict, and it persisted long after the time of Justinian. Other less important heresies mentioned by Procopius were those of the Eunomians, the Sabbatiani and the Montani. ”

“ The events of Justinian's reign, which excite our curious attention by their number, variety, and importance, are diligently related by the secretary of Belisarius, a rhetorician, whom eloquence had promoted to the rank of senator and praefect of Constantinople. According to the vicissitudes of courage or servitude, of favour or disgrace, Procopius successively composed the history, the panegyric, and the satire of his own times. ”

“ For that infernal informer Paulus, boiling over with delight, arose to exercise his poisonous employment with increased freedom, and while the members of the emperor's council and the military officers were employed in the investigation of these affairs, as they were commanded, Proculus was put to the torture, who had been a servant of Silvanus, a man of weak body and of ill health; so that every one was afraid lest the exceeding violence of his torture should prove too much for his feeble limbs, so that he would expose numbers to be implicated in the accusations of atrocious crimes. ”

“ After the defeat of Saturninus, two officers, named Proculus and Bonosus, assumed the purple in Germany. They were both men of ability, and the emperor found it necessary to take the field against them in person. Proculus being defeated fled for succour to the Franks, by whom he was betrayed, and he fell in battle against the imperial troops. Bonosus held out for some time, but having received a decisive overthrow, he hanged himself. As he had been remarkable for his drinking powers, one who saw him hanging cried, “There hangs a jar, not a man.” ”

“ For each of them, says Proclus, is allotted an appropriate life and motion. For since the demiurgic sacred law distributes to every mortal nature that which is adapted to it, and co-arranges every thing with a view to the blessedness of the universe, what ought we to say concerning the governors of the world? Ought we not to assert that they have received from their father, every thing appropriate and every good; and that shining with the splendors of beauty, they not only fabricate the generation of time in conjunction with the father, but also lead and govern the whole world? ”

“ Perhaps Proculeianus knows nothing about this case either. Let it therefore through you, as a man of grave and dispassionate spirit, be made known to him; and let him order that man to be dismissed from his communion, who has chosen it for no other reason than that he had, on account of insubordination and dissolute habits, forfeited his clerical office in the Catholic Church. ”

“ He was the {11} nephew of Justin, and he was already trained in the work of government; but he seemed to be even more zealous as a theologian than as a lawyer or administrator. The problem of Monophysitism fascinated him. [Sidenote: The Emperor Justinian.] From the first, he applied himself seriously to the study of the question in all its bearings. Night after night, says Procopius, he would study in his library the writings of the Fathers and the Holy Scriptures themselves, with some learned monks or prelates with whom he might discuss the problems which arose from their perusal. ”

“ The interest of Procopius has shifted suddenly from events to persons, and his one purpose comes to be to impugn the motives of Justinian and of the able Belisarius, and to cover with vilest slander the Empress and Antonina, the wife of Belisarius. This, obviously, is the central theme of the Secret History, and the author concentrates all his effort on the attempt to demonstrate the utter depravity of Justinian and of Theodora, the futility of Belisarius, and the shamelessness of Antonina. ”

“ Other groups at variance with the state religion were the Manichaeans, devotees of an independent religion, though often regarded as a perversion of Christianity, the Samaritans, whose creed was older than that of Christianity, and the Polytheists, who seem to have included, for Procopius, the adherents of the ancient religions of Greece and of Rome.
As to doctrine, the Arians maintained that the three Persons of the Trinity are not of the same substance: that the Son is indeed like the Father, but not identical in essence. ”

“ The Secret History of Procopius is a strange companion for the Histories and the Buildings by the same author. The story of the three wars — against the Persians, the Vandals and the Goths — had almost been completed when the author, in seeming disgust, decided to regale a safely removed future age with the back-stage gossip that had been current while Justinian and Theodora had been playing their imperial roles, and while Belisarius had been leading the Roman arms from triumph to triumph. ”

“ Procopius, and he, thinking that if Fate were at all propitious, he might easily rise to the highest power, lay in wait like a wild beast which prepares to make its spring the moment it sees anything to seize. ”

“ The characteristics of the Gods called νοητος και νοεροι intelligible and at the same time intellectual, and of the Gods that are νοεροι intellectual alone, he appears to have transferred to his middle triad which is characterized by dominion, might, and power. And he has adapted his third triad consisting of Principalities, Archangels, and Angels, to the supermundane, liberated, and mundane orders of Gods. For the supermundane Gods are called by Proclus in the sixth book of the following work αρχαι Principalities, or rulers, which is the word employed by Dionysius and Paul. ”

“ And as the day of his death approached, he went with Forkernus unto his brother Brocadius, and commanded Forkernus on his obedience that he should, after his decease, take on himself the government of the church over which he presided. But he, refusing and protesting that it accorded neither to reason nor to justice that he should in the church of his father take on himself the guidance of souls, lest he should seem to hold in heritage the sanctuary of the Lord, his father and pastor bound him thereto by his iterated commands. Why need we many words? ”

“ The writings of Procopius were read and applauded by his contemporaries; but, although he respectfully laid them at the foot of the throne, the pride of Justinian must have been wounded by the praise of an hero who perpetually eclipses the glory of his inactive sovereign. The conscious dignity of independence was subdued by the hopes and fears of a slave, and the secretary of Belisarius laboured for pardon and reward in the six books of imperial edifices. ”