Justinian: Emperor, Soldier, Saint

Hello, and welcome to Western SIEV. In today's Bonus author interview, I sit down with historian Peter Cyrus and we discuss his newest book on Justinian. It really is an all encompassing historical biography. It touches on every aspect of Justinian's life and his impact on the Byzantine Empire. There's whole sections on, of course, military affairs Belisardius, Assassinid, Persian Empire, and the reconquest

of the West. There's also lengthy discussions of domestic policy, specifically Justinian's involvement in theology, which is fascinating topic in and of itself. The historian discusses the rise of Isophia and the Church and the miracle that that was, and in terms of its construction. There's something in this book for everyone. I know a lot of my listeners are avid Roman history bands, and so this

is going to be right up your alley. Now. The book is several hundred pages long, so we do not have time to get to everything. I tried to touch on what I felt were some of the most interesting highlights and also some of the more interesting historical what ifs. But if you're interested in more information, about justin Ian. Go ahead and clink the link in the show notes to purchase the book. You will not be disappointed. And so, without further ado, here's the interview. All right, welcome back.

So, as I mentioned a moment ago, I'm sitting down with historian Peter Saris and we're talking about his most recent book, Justinian Emperor Soldier Saint. And I think the title really kind of summarizes, to a large extent, what is a fantastic book and the complex personality that is the Emperor Justinian. When I was an undergrad, I took a course on Byzantine history and we discussed Justinian, but it focused almost entirely on military exploits, particularly his

efforts to reconquer the West. And then when I was in law school, took a history of law course and it focused on Justinian. But Justinian in that case, the lawgiver, Justinian, the code maker. Justinian one of the four runners of early modern jurisprudence, and so it's interesting to think about

him in a lot of different ways. But to start the conversation here, I think we should frame ourselves and remind the listener is of what the Byzantine Roman because they would have called themselves Roman world look like at the turn of the sixth centuries or in sixth century CE, and that's the time that Justinian comes to power. And so what would the you know, Eastern Mediterranean and generally you know, European situation would have looked like at the turn of that

sixth century. Yeah, from the perspective of Constantinople, really at the start of the sixth century, the East Roman Empire ruled from Constantinople was in what I would think of as a sort of position of ambivalent strength. On the one hand, it was still one of the two great superpowers of Western Eurasia,

alongside its great rival the Susanian Empire of Persia. From his season Contentinople, the emperor had a sway extending over still Greece, past the Balkans, Anatolia, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, particularly important given

its the sort of economic powerhouse of the Mediterranean. But beyond that, in a sort of geopolitical sense, there are two great challenges which are really I think playing upon people's minds in Constantinople at the start of the century and just prior to Justinian come into power, the first is that over the course of the fifth century, the Western Roman Empire had gradually disappeared, and we have

the emergence to a series of independent Romano Germanic successor kingdoms under primarily barbarian rulers. Now, some of these rulers would still acknowledge some sort of loose overlordship emanating from Constantinople, but others certainly wouldn't and openly reject Constantinopolitan political claims.

So you have an emperor in Constantinople who is claiming universal authority, but that universal authority is manifestly contested by the facts on the ground, and core sectors of the Mediterranean coastline are now under Barbarian domination and court out to the Empire Italy, North Africa, Spain, Gaul in particular. So those are the

challenges from the west to the east. One factor that had enabled the Eastern Roman Empire to surmount the crisis of the fifth century was that they had been abled the authorities there had been able to negotiate a detente with the Susanian Empire of Persia. Both the Persians and the East Romans are face a common foe

in the Huns and so they cooperate against the Huns with one another. At the start of the sixth century, that peace with Persia suddenly breaks down when the Persian Shah Caabad launches what the Romans perceived to be a completely unprovoked attack on Roman territory in Syria. And getting the Persians out of Syria requires a

massive mobilization of manpower and resources. So you have this growing cent of insecurity in Constantinople, resulting from an awareness that Roman power in the West is no more, and now this intense sense of insecurity across the lands of the Near East, which also plays into political conditions and content in Ople because many members of the Senate there own estates in the East. So I think you have

this sort of this paradoxical position of what is still a great power. It's economy is booming, its population is rising, cities are growing, commerce is

living, but in political terms, it feels increasingly constrained and challenged. Yeah, and I think one of the things that is always interesting about this era is that coming so close on the heels of the collapse of the West, you know, there has to be a question in the minds of a lot of people of is this a temporary situation, Is this a temporary reprieve for

some Western territories, or is the Western Roman Empire gone forever? And the other thing worth pointing out here is, of course, just to remind the people who are listening at home, that we are talking about a geopolitical situation prior to the rise of Islam. So just bear that in mind as we're going forward here, that that is going to be a major shakeup that does

come in the future, but post dates Justinian. Now, getting to Justinian more specifically for a second, he isn't someone that you would expect to come to power, certainly not in his early formative years, and the way that he does come to power is kind of interesting and leads to some interesting historical

what ifs. So I was hoping you could kind of walk through a little bit of Justinian's background, his family, and how does he wind up being in this position of becoming arguably one of the most powerful men in the world. Yeah, so I think we have to wind back a bit to the middle of the fifth century. Justinian is born around the year four eight two,

but we need to go back a little bit before that. So Justinian and his family really come from the regions the sort of south or southwest of the city of Nish Romans of Ignaisus in what's now sort of southern Serbia, and Justinian would later founder a city near the village where he claimed to have

been born, the remains of which you can still see now. In the mid to late fifth century, this was really the Empire's sort of wild west, as a zone which had been subjected to massive military insecurity in the middle years the fifth century, subjected to Hunnic attacks and attacks by Goths. It clearly did enormous damage to the local infrastructure at the time when around the middle of the fifth century, this is probably a region where it's not clear who's

in control. The Romans are claiming it, other barbarian groups are claiming it. It's probably a sort of no man's land where no one group is in total control, but where poverty is endemic. Disruption has been massive. Now just In Justinian's family are basically peasants. It would appear from the region around to the south of nis Natius, his uncle, and really the rise of the family begins with his uncle Justin, who later source tells us as a

young man as a swineherd. Now, as with a lot of impoverished but ambitious young men, the young Justin wants out of the situation he finds himself, and probably around the year four seventy, he and a couple of friends of his decide to head to Constantinople. They go there on foot the hope

of bettering their fortunes by joining the Imperial Army. Once in Constantinople, Justin is extraordinarily lucky in as he arrives at a moment when the authorities are overhauling the arrangements for the Palace Guard. Justin, we're told, is of striking appearance. He's tall, he's good looking, he's what you want standing outside the palace advertising imperial power. So he gets recruited into the new guards units in the Palace. So this suddenly project this swineherd from the Balkans into the

center of imperial power in the greatest city in the known world. Justin is clearly a man of some talent. He rises up through the ranks and by the time he's in his sixties he's head of the Palace Guard, and he's quite an education of sorts. Through the army. He has a great career. He marries a loving wife, but they don't have kids, and so at some point it's probably, I would say, about four ninety Justin writes to his sister back home, suggested she send her son to Constantinople to be

raised by Justin, and she does this. I think the boy is probably about eight, and his name is Petrus. Once in constant and this will be our Justinian, because once in Constantinople, Justin will give this boy an education, he will adopt him, giving him the name Petrus Eustinianus, where we get our Justinian from. And he then arranges for this boy to be recruited into the palace guards himself. So we have, as it were,

a career that opens up to Justinian by virtue of Justin's childlessness. Phase one, Phase two round the five eighteen. In the five eighteen, the Emperor Anastasius is ailing and then dies, but he hasn't made arrangements for his succession, and there's a struggle for power at the palace court, and finally no one can agree on any between any of the obvious candidates, so they agree on Justin to be made emperor as a sort of compromise candidate in the expectation

he's going to be around for much longer. He's in his late sixties now, So Justin becomes emperor, and that extraordinary step then opens the way for Justinian. Now Justin doesn't initially, as it were, a point Justinian's a very high office, but he gives the young man a stage on which to

advance himself. And from that moment on, from the moment Justin is emperor, we see Justinian starting to try to prepare the way for his own rise to power, sidelining opponents, having at least one assassinated, it would appear I'm reaching out for allies in the church, on the streets of Constantinople, through the circusfactions like sports supporters clubs, reaching out for allies at court, and progressively he manages to persuade his uncle to appoint him to high and higher

rank, until really, by the time Justin is drawing towards his death, Justinian has managed to get himself set in place as the heir apparent. So it's a series of strokes of good fortune for the family and Justinian matched with and matched by very careful preparation and politicking on Justinian's part once his uncle or

father has become emperor. That's really interesting. One of the things that I find fascinating about both Roman history and Byzantine history is by looking at the individual emperors, and there seems to me, oftentimes, and I'm certainly not the only person who's ever argued this, that there's a great distinction and quality of emperors oftentimes between those who have to do something to obtain their position and those

who are the quote unquote born to the purple. And I wanted I love that story, and it's important because I want to point out that even though Justinian does succeed justin he doesn't have to sure, he doesn't have to conquer the empire, doesn't have to win a civil war. But by no stretch of the imagination, was he is no, By no stretch of the imagination, is he committists. Okay, by no stretch of the imagination, is he sort of just born to this and this is something he's going to get.

And that kind of brings me to my next question, which is an impossible question to answer, and I concede that at the outset, but it's a question that just comes up all the time, you know, whether whenever we're talking about pre modern individuals, people want to know, well, what were they like? You know, what was what was their personality like? You know, how did how did they behave? And of course we don't have any tweets from Justinian. We don't have any. I suppose they're not

tweets anymore. Sorry, we don't have any. We don't have any video of him. But you know, we I think we could discern something of his personality. So I was hoping you could tell us all, you know, as much as you can. You know, what do we think Justinian

was like as a person and as an emperor? Yeah? Unfortunately, because he leaves so much legal material behind in his own voice, and you know, we have reason to believe that bits of it are genuinely penned by the emperor, and we have theological tracts by him, and we have accounts of him from written by people who are close close to the center of imperial power.

We can actually come away unusually with Justinian, with an emperor, become away the sense of emperor whose personality really does come across from the sources quite consistently. In particular, he's clearly a workaholic. He tells us that he works deep into the ninth night, and critics confirmed this. He has a constant urge to micro manage. When we look at legislation that's emerging from his court, it goes into the finest of detail on the levels of remuneration and

command structures, on the very distant fringes of empires. He's sometimes been compared with Stalin compared to Stalin, and that of comparison is largely to do with this, this obsession with micro management. He has a fiery temper, and we see him losing his rag on a number of occasions, even with quite

high ranking holy men and priests. He has a very prickly sense of his own dignity, which is partly informed by the fact that, as you alluded to, Okay, he is the son of someone who's become emperor, but the family's background is quite obscure. They're from quite an insignificant background. Surrounding him at court are lots of members are very prestigious Roman senatorial families, and his center of his own dignity and his sensitivity to being slighted is I think

sharpened by that He's constantly in a hurry. Whether he's writing to the Pope about theology, or to his architects about constructions, or to his legal team about legal reform, he's constantly saying, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. And then in terms of his own mindset, one thing that is a uniting thread from priority when he becomes emperor all the way to his dying days is he is fascinated by theology and obsessed with Christian doctrine in a way

that's really very unusual. And I say we can trace this e long before his emperor. So when he is really just a guards officer at court, the nephew or adopted son of an emperor, but still not yet holding very high position, we see him writing to the Pope in Rome, trying to engage him in detailed doctrinal discussion. Now, this would have come across very strangely in Rome, and it's very unusual. I think that really gives us an in trusting insight into him. He has a romantic streak in that,

rather like his uncle, he marries a wife. It would appear the empathy Adora. Really it's only explicable in terms of a love match. I mean, she is a very lowly background herself, and he could have required a much posture wife in court circles who would have been much more politically useful had he wanted to. And there are flashes of a sense of humor. I think I found one joke in the entirety of his legislation, and it's a very loyally joke. But you know, we don't have and I'm not aware

of many other jokes. And Byzantine emperors as a ruler, he has enormous difficulty letting go or delegating responsibility, and perhaps tied into that, he has a tendency to exhaust those he works with, driven on by a very strong sense of moral purpose, which ties in to the theological interests as well. Yeah, when I picture the Emperor Justin he and I oftentimes picture someone. I mean, there's there's the famous mosaic from Ravenna, which is probably the

image that just about everybody has when they think about Justinian. But I imagine someone meetings all day and then wanderings the halls of the palace, unable to sleep at night, consumed by thoughts of things going on in distant reaches of the empire, and it's it is remarkable the level of micromanaging that he attempts. And I say attempts because you know we are you know, this is

the classical age. You know, a message travels as fast as a horse can ride or as fast as a ship can sail, so circumstances oftentimes may have changed dramatically by the time the message goes from wherever to Constantinople and then from Constantinople back. So to think that you're going to be able to send relevant orders is kind of an interesting theory for him to think. But I want to then ask a little bit about you. You talked about this about

the rise of Sosanid Persia. Well not the rise, but you know, the breakdown of peaceful relations between you know, the Roman Empire slash Byzantine Empire and the Sosanids in the start of the sixth century. And Rome always has done typically well when it has peaceful relations with whatever permutation of the Persian Empire, it happens to be dealing with, whether it's the part the instance, sonets, so on and so forth, and tends to struggle more when it

has to engage in military affairs. And I think to an extent this because you know, they're the only two quasi modern states. They're the only two states capable of marshaling the resources to engage in lengthy wars of conquest. Yeah. I mean you've got, you know, different tribal entities. You've got the Avars, You've got the Huns, who might from time to time strike, but you're not necessarily concerned that they're going to take large swaths of territory

and hold it. That's not the case with Persia. You might legitimately lose Antioch and not be able to get it back. So that's a big, big, big problem. What does Justinian do as a way to try to

confront this rising threat that's I suppose reignited in the East. Yeah. I think this is one of those areas where because the breakdown in relation to Persia predates Justinian's rise to power, one arguably has the highest degree of continuity between his reign and those of his immediate predecessors, not just his uncle Justin, but also Anastasius before him, under whom the war with Persia has re rupted.

So broadly speaking, one distinguishes between the direct frontier zone between the East Roman Empire and Persia that's essentially the frontier between modern Syria and Irac at all intents and purposes, and then the zone into the butted to north and South

Arabia and the Caucasus. In that direct frontier zone, Justinian follows in the footsteps of his predecessors in a massive program of investment in the defensive infrastructure of those eastern frontiers, of the Eastern Frontier, trying to achieve a measure of sort of defense in depth, trying to limit the damage that any marauding Persian foe can inflict if they break through into Roman territory that's very much continuity along

the desert frontier. The problem the Romans have is that their desert frontier is very extensive and largely undefended, and so very prone to the Persians striking across the desert zone. So there Justinian affects the creation of a pro Roman Arab tribal confederacy known as the Jaffnids, who he will build up as agents of imperial influence in the region to try to block any ability on the past of the Persians to strike from that direction with their Arab allies, the Nazareth.

This struggle for power between these two powers in Arabia will start to have increasingly pronounced consequences in the Arabian world itself, leading to much greater state formation and military development there, which is important for the background to Islam. Then heading north in the Caucasus, this is where in many ways, the strategic interests

of the two empires most clash. Here we see Justinian crucially creating a new command structure, creating a new field army under a new general to take command of warfare in the Caucasus. We see him trying to use Christianity to extend imperial influence in the region, and also as Christianity is used to meet as a means of sort of cultural imperialism in the Caucasian zone and as people are drawn towards Concertinople that way, seeks to impose much more direct rule on those

Caucasian territories where the Romans manage to get a toe hold. He tries to more fully integrate Armenian territories, he tries to impose direct rule and other frontier ones. So we have this combination of military tactics, diplomatic tactics, fortifications, but also in terms of diplomacy, especially later in his reign, he will really play upon a key feature of the Susanian Empire. The Sasanians perceive themselves to be massively vulnerable to attack from the world of the Eurasian step the

stretches out east towards China. At Hanik attacks in preceding centuries had done massive harm to the Sasanians. So every time the Persians appeared to be under pressure from a nomadic foe, just in An intervenes to try to extract greater concessions from the Persians. And we see him deploying that strategy, I said, particularly at the end of his reign, but it is a theme throughout when

he engages with the great superpower rival East. Yeah, it's interesting. You know a lot of times, you know, I'll listen to people who are very critical of the Byzantine Empire, and I'm just going to use that term for just to draw a distinction between that and the unified Roman Empire for the

purposes of right now. Who are very critical of the Byzantine Empire for being oh they're too diplomatic as opposed to you know, you're the power of the of the Roman legions, you know, marching across the world, which I think that ignores a couple of things. First of all, war is uncertain, you know, there's there's no indication that if you go to battle that

you're going to win, especially with an evenly matched opponent. And second of all, let's just face it, wars are kind of expensive, and diplomacy is a lot cheaper, and it's a lot cheaper to get someone else to fight your war for you if you can't. Certainly, as you point out, Justinian's intervention with the tribal peoples of the Arabian Peninsula is going to to some extent facilitate the Arab explosion of military expansion that's going to come later on.

He didn't know that at the time. And I'm not going to sit here and Monday morning quarterback him from thousands of years ago. I don't think that's worth you just raised about the Justinian is perfectly willing when he deems it appropriate to buy peace with Persia through massive diplomatic subsidies. And there is an interesting correlation I've spotted before in the sixth century whereby because Justinian is, in terms of his career structure, a military man is in the palace guards.

That's the sort of the mindset is inculcated with. In general terms, it tends to be in the sixth and seventh centuries, Roman emperors or byz Antine emperors of military background who are most willing to pay for peace. Is the civilian emperors who's as it were, political base, are most anxious about their tax money being given away to barbarians who are most inclined to be aggressive on that front and to prefer war over diplomatic subsidies. And that's a very interesting

correlation, and Justinian very much fits into that model. As you said, the military have a great appreciation of the dangers of war once it kicks off. Yeah, I mean, it's true. It's it's also true. I mean, if you even want to look at more modern history of most of most American presidents who have engaged in most of the major conflicts are not the military presidents. They're they're not there. They tend to be the civilian president.

So it is interesting that and I think that that's that is a theme that kind of runs throughout much of history, is that people who have engaged in combat are much less willing to roll the dice on other people's lives than those who have not, which I suppose makes sense from just a practical standpoint. But and and not to jump around a bit, but I want to make sure that we do cover all aspects of Justinian. So I want to ask about the law code for a moment, because his roles as a law

maker are really unprecedented in a lot of ways and incredibly dramatic. And I wonder if maybe, if you want to look at, you know, long term contributions to society, if maybe this isn't the most important contribution that Justinian bequeaths to sort of the Western world. Is this incredible law revision that he undertakes. So I wondered if you could talk about that, about what is he seeking to accomplish by this, and just how big of a project are

we talking about here. There are two aspects to Justinian as a law giver which we have to think about, both of which are very important, and they're interconnected. First of all, Justinian as codifile. Now when it comes to power, the problem is there's just so much legal material in circulation that it's very hard to work out what the law on any given situation is.

And this is sort of recipe for chaos. I mean, the reason for this is that Roman law is inherited by Justinian, has different sources of law and different sources of legal authority. So you have laws issued by emperors. You also have in circulation extensive legal writings by legal scholars from earlier centuries which

can be cited in court and an interpretation. Now, an effort had been made earlier in the fifth century to impose some order on laws issued buy emperors, and you have the collation of the so called Theodosian Code in the early fifth century. But since then many more laws have been issued by the subsequent emperors, so again that problem has returned. There's just a lot of legal

enactments. Sometimes they're contradictory. How do you decide between which laws? An attempt had also been made to try to give priority to some legal scholars and their writings over others. But even in terms of those given precedents, you're still talking about, you know, sort of around three million lines of Latin text or two thousand volumes. So this is a huge, massive material for

people to try to marshal when deciding the law. Now, Justinian decides very early on in his reign to impose order on this situation and to edit and boil down the legal texts so as to express a single unified opinion and will

presented as that of Justinian. And it's a sign of how successful he and his commissioners are that it's almost impossible for us to really work out in any detail now what Roman law was like before they got to work, because they're so good, as it were, air gushing out what they don't approve of.

So we have, first of all, the order five two eight, a year after it comes to power to issue his own codex replacing the Theodosian Code in reforming all the inherited legislation issued by emperors to express a single unified will and model, as it were, removing contradictions and not have you.

That initially completed by five two nine, although there's signs that his law commissions have done it in too much of a hurry, because he's been urging them onto aggressively, and they end up having to produce a second version in five

to three four. But then more extraordinarily, he does try something which no one had ever tried before, which was to impose order on this swirling mass of jurisdic opinions written by the legal scholars, the so called jurist consults, and in an extraordinary program between five thirty and five to three three, his law commissioners go through these inherited legal texts and reduce them by ninety five percent

to create this extraordinarily condensed version of Roman legal thinking which can be used more readily alongside the laws of the Codex. Now it's still a massive work when it emerges. I mean, Justinian's Digest is still one and a half times to size the Bible. But it's an extraordinary achievement. And Justinian tells us when he started giving instructions that it be put into effect, the compilation to Digest. Many said it was impossible, others say it would take ten years.

His law commissioners get it done into three. At the same time, they also produce a new legal textbook, the Institute, which is like a map of the law, showing how these different bits of the law and Roman law as a system cohere and operate. So that's the codification, and that is the form then in which Roman law will be received by subsequent European societies. And really it's the common law of Europe until Napoleon iss used his own

code in the nineteenth century. But at the same time he's also issuing an enormous amount of legislation himself. And once again here we see his real interest in the law long before he comes across his chief legal officer, Trebonian, who relies upon for the codification to a great extent. And we see this from the fact, for example, that you know Justin the first his uncle

wasn't a lazy administrator or a lazy emperor. But we have this period of five months during which Justinian is co emperor alongside Justin, because Justin is now ailing, and it is a remarkable fact that a third of all the laws we have from Justin's reign are issued during those five months when Justinian has managed to get himself alongside in power in his eight and a half year reign. For his eight and a half year reign, we have about thirty laws that

survived from Justin as emperor. For the first eight years of Justinian's reign we have over four hundred. I mean, the pace of legislation just skyrockets, and we see him intervening on almost every aspect of life as lived in Roman society at this time. He's codifying the Roman law of marriage, he's christianizing

it. Every aspect really is addressed, and he starts to push Roman legal thinking in fundamentally new directions which are also going to lay the foundations for really Byzantine law, which has very different conceptions of things like the family, for example, as compared to classical Roman law. And this is something emerging from

Justinian's court during this extraordinary period of legal activism. Yeah. Interesting is as you're talking, you know, I don't want to like, no, I don't want to call other like previous Roman emperors or Byzantine emperors lazy, but certainly by comparison to Justinian, most people look like, what are you doing

taking Saturdays and Sundays off? You know, he's he works NonStop and this is the sort of project that only somebody who has this level of sort of dedication to the state and to state craft is going to be able to undertake. And it's just if you take nothing else away from this conversation today, just remember that when you think about European common law to an extend American common laws, of course we adopt English common law as well. You know,

it forms the basis it comes from Justinian. Justinian, like you say, we don't really have a sense of what Roman law was prior to this point because of the massive reorganization and restructuring, to an extent streamlining of everything that we have. I mean, that's a huge takeaway. Another one that I want to ask about is Isosophia, which, of course the massive church constructed net today. Of course it's all I think it's actually a museum, or maybe it's a mosque. I get, oh, it's a mosque again.

Okay, thank you. I know that it had gone both ways. So but I think it's you know, to to understand what someone would have experienced in the sixth century visiting this site, I think is just almost mind blowing. You write the book it's nothing less than miraculous the construction of this building. And I wanted you to break that down for a second because I think after reading that your chapter or section of the book on the Isosophia, I

came away with that exact same word miraculous. This is nothing less than a miracle, and I think people in that time period would have seen it that way too. So what is it that makes the construction of Isophia so miraculous, well, I think for those worshiping within it. And this is something very hard to really appreciate when you go and visit the modern the building its current state, not the modern building in its current state due to the number

of windows. What have you been blocked out? Is that Agasophia, as reconstructed by Justinian after the nikobriots, is an extraordinary combination of acoustic engineering and lighting engineering, and as it were, it's attempts to create a total sensor

you experience for the worshiper. And we've become more and more aware of this thanks to fantastic work being done by acoustic engineers and also by musicologists such as the group who in the US and of Capella Romana have done amazing work reconstructing the liturgy of the Great Church at its heights. And when you draw these things together, you get a real sense of the very careful, the extraordinary evocation of the numinous which the authorities are aiming at and which they achieve,

because even Justinian's critics like Procopious emphasize this. Then beyond that, in terms of how people would have understood it as a sort of miraculous structure. I think you know you've touched upon the two crucial ones. It is the extraordinary speed with which it is constructed to start off with, I mean it's destroyed during the n The old Hagiasophia is destroyed during the nikerriot of January five to three two. The new Hagiosophia is formally inaugurated barely five years later, December

five three seven. Now you compare that to the length of time it would take to build medieval cathedrals in the West, and you get a cent of how staggering that is. It's a gargantuan mobilization of manpower and resources. Later, Byzantine observers would assume that there was the work of a miracle, the Justinian be given the design by an angel. They claim that ten thousand workmen were required and that it cost the equivalent equivalent of a year's tax revenues from

Egypt. Now those aren't necessarily real figures, but they're giving you a sense of how Byzantines understood the scale of the project. The speed is something really worth emphasizing, though, because in order to construct it, Justinian has to ransack the cities of the Near East to get the building materials, which is why actually it's a bit hotchpodg inside. You know some you know, not all the columns are the same length, and some have had to be sort

of doubled up and what have you. It's you can see one again, the Justinian's always in a hurry, and you see that actually in the internal construction of Hagia Sophia. But its scale is also exceptional. I mean, the internal height of it, beneath the central dome is equivalent to a fifteen story building. It would be the largest domed construction anywhere in the world until the sixteenth century. And it is domed. I mean, no Roman emperor

had ever attempted to build a domed structure on this scale. And this really clearly pushes his engineers to the absolute limits of their knowledge and their technical capacity.

And once again, I think, both in his architecture and to some extent in his lawmaking and in some of his military endeavors, I mean, he really pushes those under him to the maximum, sometimes up to and just beyond what they're really capable of. Yeah, and at the speed, by the way, for those who want me to put this into context, for you for a second, and some of this is a little hyperboleep, but

you know, Notre Dame took about two hundred years. You know, if you want to go from beginning to end by comparison to five for this, I mean, if you want to talk about miracle, yeah, I mean it would seem like it would be conceivable for someone in the military, perhaps a noble to be away from the city for five years and come back and it's done. And that I mean that in terms of pre modern building capacity, that's unheard of. That's just simply unheard of for a project of this

scale and shape. And again, I think gives us an indication of Justinian's personality and his drive to see this project finished. Not twenty years from now, right now. I want it done today, and that's when we're gonna get it done. All right, Let's talk about the West, because you know, most people are when they think Justinian, are gonna think Belisadius and

his efforts to reconquer the lost Roman territories in the West. And it starts with North Africa and is kind of shockingly I suppose, or maybe it's maybe

surprisingly easily successful. But you know, to start, you know what gets Justinian involved in North Africa, because it would seem like he has plenty on his plate with the Sosani Empire. Yeah, in North Africa, just by way of a bit of background, had fallen to this group of Vandals in the fifth century Carthage, fall to them in four three nine, and they

establish a very prosperous and very it will appear stable kingdom initially. Now, the Romans had last attempted to intervene there in four six' eight, when an imperial fleet had been destroyed by the fireships of the Vandal king. Geiseric Byzantine armada is wiped out, and now after the Byzantine policy is one of positive engagement really in so far as they can. But as I think a sense in which the authorities in Constantinople are always minded to intervene in Africa if

they get the chance. One reason is because it's so prosperous. So the landscape of North Africa is good for tax revenues if you can get it back. Second, the Vandals have a major fleet, and that can pose a threat to East Roman continuing control of the sea lanes of the Central and the Eastern Mediterranean should that be a problem. And lastly, the Vandals are followers of a fourth century churchman called Arius, who was regarded as a heretic in

Constantinople. And there are constant reports of the members of the Imperial the so called Catholic or Orthodox Church, being persecuted at the hands of the Aryan Vandal authorities. So you have all these reasons for Byzantin to be minded perhaps to intervene should the opportunity arise. Now Justinian has courted previously the heir to the Vandal throne, a certain Kilderic could come to power in five to two three, and under whom the treatment of the Catholic clergy seems to improve, and

we start seeing a diplomatic tilt back towards Constantinople. But Kilderic is not a very militarily effective king, and in these early medieval societies in the West, military effectiveness is the key requirement for good kingship. And eventually, by virtue of his military failings in five point thirty he has brought down by his cousin Gelimer, and we start seeing signs of tension and of this kingdom starting to

fragment. The governor of Sardinia casts off Vandal overlordship there's revolved by the Romans in Tripoli. So this gives Justinian an opportunity and a pretext to intervene,

but interestingly he doesn't do so then in five point thirty. Instead, the intervention only comes after, first of all, a peace has been negotiated with Persia in five to three to two, and also in the aftermath of the Niker riots, when Justin has almost been deposed from the throne in an outbreak of rioting which members of the Senate appear to have tried to take advantage of to depose the Emperor, his legal activism actually being a source of enormous anxiety

to them. So I think on one level, the intervention there is driven by both an opportunity provided by political instability in the Vandal kingdom combined with now a need to try to rebuild the police call credibility of the regime at home by making an opportunistic formay to the West. So I think that explains the timing of it. An opportunistic is kind of the right word here in Justinian,

and we'll talk about this at the end. You can be criticized in these efforts to reconquer parts of the West, and that well does he deplete resources needed to actually counteract Persia in their assassenods in the east in order to

try to reconquer parts of the empire that cannot really be reincorporated. But to an extent, if you are looking at where can we be militarily successful for the least cost, certainly the Vandal Kingdom of North Africa looks much more like an easy target compared to the Sosanids to the east by a million stretches of

the imagination, and they proved to be. The other thing that is always worth remembering is that we have to disabuse ourselves of what comes to mind when we picture North Africa right now, because what we picture North Africa right now would have not been what North Africa was like during this time period. It was much more agriculturally productive, much more fertile. It would have been a useful portion of the empire to add it back and bring it back into the

Roman sphere of influence. Belis Adius is dispatched under as you indicate, and is successful in winning a pitched battle against the Vandal Kingdom and essentially toppling it over. But I always wonder about this because I think sometimes maps can be misleading, especially at certain points. You put this big color on the map and you say this is Rome, and this is not Rome, and so

Rome has control over this. But the question that I want to ask use even after North Africa is i'll say, reincorporated into the Byzantine sphere of influence, brought back into the Roman fold. To what extent is that true? Because I think you did a nice job in the book of sort of outlining you know, how firm is Roman control once it's re established in this area compared to you know, some areas that are much much closer to Constantinople.

The emphasis from the start, and I think this probably gives one the sense of the core strategic objectives appears to have been very much on controlling the cities of the coastal zone along the Mediterranean coastline and their immediate hinterlands, which were agriculturally extremely productive, and also on controlling the key islands of the western and central Mediterranean which the Vandals had also controlled, such as Sardinia and the bally

Arics. They're really not that interested in the areas beyond that. These sort of the hinterlands of the old Vandal Kingdom where the Vandals had confronted various bear bear war lords. So as a result, during the course of both the wars and then the Roman reoccupation, really was seeing ongoing bear bear encroachment coming in from the tribal zone of Mauritania and Numidia beyond. But that the main focus is on the most taxable territory, the coastal territory and the islands are

a crucial for pinning down once more control of the Mediterranean. It's also worth emphasizing that as you say that really it's the defeat of the Vandal kingdom, it really centers on the defeat in battle then ultimately the capture of the Vandal king. In the early medieval West you see the emergence of these sort of king focused societies where if you can capture the king in a political sense, you have the kingdom as we see most obviously, the best example would be

what happens to England in ten sixty six with the Omans. Same thing really with with Howld. So he's taking advantage of the sort of new dynamics of power that have emerged in the West in order to achieve this result, and then you know, it goes further, and you know, Justinian has this

I'll say, you know, ace up his sleeve. He's got this general by the name of Belisarius, who is unbelievably effective in the field, like just just incredible, and in short order is able to then move from eventually North Africa to Sicily, to southern Italy, to Rome and to Ravenna. And that's just a remarkable sort of a series of military achievements in such a

short period of time. And I'm just kind of curious if you could speak to that for a second, because I've always wondered about this military campaign. You know, to what extent was this part of an overarching strategy, or to what extent was this just simply byzantine opportunism, To what extent was this just I can't believe we keep winning, but we keep winning easily. So let's just keep rolling the dice. You know, where where do we end

up on that spectrum? Here? Yes, I think it's I don't think that Justinian comes to power, as it were, with a plan to reconquer the Western Roman Empire. There's one moment in one law at the height of ambition in five fee five, where he raises that prospect. But I think he's probably getting a bit over excited there. I think what we see is

much more piecemeal, much more opportunistic. But his policies in the West are always united by common analysis of power, which is understanding that these kingdoms in the West are always vulnerable when there is a succession dispute, or a dispute over the military effectiveness of the ruler. It's this king focused nature again. Now, the same circums, very similar circumstances that had arisen in Africa that

open the way the Byzantine intervention there then arise in Italy. The old king, Theodoric, who is a fantastic ruler, had died in five two six. There hadn't been an adult male heir to succeed him capable of stepping into Theodoric's war boots. Instead, you have a boy king Athalaric, who reigns under the care of his mother, a Mala Suntha, a marvelous woman, but she can't lead the army. And he then dies in five three four, just before he's old enough to start to be a militarily effective king.

And we then have this struggle for power at the court in Italy ruled from the Venna between Amalasuntha and her cousin Theoda Had. Amalasuntha is assassinated and this now once again opens the way for Justinian's armies, led by Belisarius, who he's talent spotted when Belisarius was a fighting soldier, to intervene. So the circumstance in terms of the analysis of power are very similar. Belisarius leads his

armies into Sicily. It's effectively an unopposed campaign. There's not much by way of Gothic garrison troops in Sicily. The Gothic army is concentrated to the north, where you would normally expect Italy to be attacked from. What then happens as Belisius crosses onto the mainland is that the Gothic high commands sort of goes into meltdown. The king theodor Had, who again has no military credentials,

is assassinated. They have a new king, Vitigis Ritiguis, who is more militarily effective, but he has to face the problem that Belisius is advancing into

Italy from the south. More Roman forces are also advancing on northern Italy, and the Romans have also mobilized their allies, the Franks, who are also now bearing down on northern Italy. So Vitigis has to choose between trying to hold out in Rome, on which Belisara's advancing, or pulling his men back to consolidate his control of the Ostro god big heartland, which is to be found in the land to the north of the River po around Wavenna, which

is the political capital and the area from which the gods have always expected any attack to come from the world of the North. So really Belisaras is able to enter Rome essentially unopposed because Vitigis has taken the strategic decision to pull back to Levenna. Once again, the authority is playing on the vulnerability of Italy to attack from the north. He's then able. There's a lot of toing

and throwing. We went at times going to hear, but then we end up in a situation where by about five three nine to five forty Vitigis and his regime is hold up in northern Italy, hold up in Ravenna. But Justinian is now minded to try to draw the Italian campaign to a close the

Persians and mobilizing on the eastern frontier. He really wants Belisarius his services back there again, and Vitigis offers to essentially partition Italy with Justinian, with the Goths maintaining a rump state to the north of the Poe, keeping Ravenna acknowledging Justinian's overlordship, but Justinian having the rest, so Justinian can have Italy south of Italy can have Rome, he has Sicily, and Justinian seems minded,

his ambassadors seem minded to accept this. The problem is that the ambassador's sense to do this deal. The problem they're faced with is that the Goths expect Belisarius to sign the peace treaty as well, and Belisarius prevaricates. He thinks Justinian can get more out of this situation. This is recorded by his secretary, the historian Procopius, who is with him during these campaigns and who's writing

his account of it. So and an extraordinary episode then appears to ensue, whereby Belisarius doesn't sign the peace treaty, and the Gothic nobility and ultimately King Vitigus himself approach him and say, look, if you cast off Justinian and make yourself Western Roman emperor. We'll support you Justinian. So I'm Bensias gives them the impression he's going to go along with this. As a result, the doors of Anna the Gate Avenna are open to him and his armies and

they are able to occupy the city. And before the Goths know what is happening, their king's been arrested, is on the ship to Constantinople, and they've had themselves over to Justinian. It's an extraordinary episode in military history.

Yeah, it's it is. It is interesting because it is a series of events and what Justinian is really good at doing here and what this example shows, and also what you brought up previously of taking advantage of whenever the Persians are attacked by one of those step peoples, is he's excellent at recognizing when there is the opportunity, when there's the opportunity to intervene, and he doesn't

pass those opportunities by. When there is the opportunity, he takes it, and he takes it consistently, and that is sort of the hallmark of a good emperor. But it's it's interesting, yeah, And he does the same in the five fifties in Spain as well. Again we get a succession dispute in the Visigothic kingdom in Spain, and now and behold, his army is suddenly turned up on the Spanish coastline, exactly the same circumstances, exactly an

analysis of power of work his purposes. Yeah, but then, of course, you know, something happens in five point forty one that's going to sort of change Justinian's fortunes, and that is that from one of the plague folk guy that are natural in the world, bubonic plague irrupts and the plague of Justinian begins, and the plague of Justinian is obviously going to have has a

dramatic effect the latter half of his reign. And so I was hoping, you know, before we get to our last question, I was hoping you could talk a little bit about the plague and how it if impacted his overall fortunes. And I often wonder, I think there's a historic what if here of what happens if the plague doesn't occur. You know what happens, and I know it's an impossible question. Is he able to accomplish more? I

think obviously the question. The answer to that is probably yes, if the plague doesn't happen, or you know, would the last years have played out in the same sort of fashion. The arrival of bubonic plague, in the words of my old professor in Oxford sil Mango, was perhaps the most important event of the sixth century in the absence of modern medicine. Bubonic plague is

one of the most devastating diseases known to mankind. And as you say in five four one, we have the first securely datable outbreak of this disease in the history of the Roman Mediterranean. Possibly visited North Africa a few centuries earlier, but this is the first truly trans regional pandemic of it. It reaches cons Dowtinople in five four to two, where we're told justin In himself contracts a disease, but miraculous he survives it soon is in Armenia, Italy.

It even reaches where I am now, so half an hour from the cottage I'm sitting in as an Anglo Saxon burial site at a place called Edig's Hill, where a few years ago we found evidence for a mass mortality episode to do with the Justinianic plague there from again the mid sixth century, so it's even reaching rural parts of the Anglo Saxon world. Now I think that this

will have this will cause mounting difficulties for Justinian over the years ahead. Initially we see him and his courtiers introducing a series of crisis driven measures aiming to sort of shore up the fiscal and legal foundations of the Roman state as mass mortality episodes lead to problems collecting text revenues, problems raising troops for the army, legal confusion as to who owns what has so many heirs are dying in

quick succession. And those crisis driven measures I think are quite good at initially containing the first ramification to the plague during the first five years down to about five four seven. But then we start getting mounting evidence for just the cumulative waves of this disease having an ever more severe impact. As it takes all its toll on the rural population the urban population, you have fewer taxpayers.

Fewer taxpayers means fewer less revenue with which to pay the army. The hard it is to pay the army, the hardred is to fight wars to both east and west and the problem for Justinian is from the early five forties you have now simultaneous warfare in the West and against the Persians, and an increasingly problematic situation in Africa as well due to bare bear pressure and military mutilely as

military pays and the forthcoming. So I think in many ways I said, it's going to increasingly constrain the Emperor's opportunities in terms of military strategy, internal domestic reform. But I think above all, I don't for me, but what I see the justin aetic plague doing primarily is exacerbating internal weaknesses and tensions

that had long bedeviled the Empire long before the advent of the plague. During his extraordinary legislation of five thirties, Justinian is complaining about the difficulty in raising enough tax revenues. He overhauls the structures of the Roman state to try to pump as much fiscality out of the Empire as possible. So tax raising is already a problem. He's already complaining that the costs of warfare make it necessary

to really improve the tax collecting mechanisms of empire. The plague now raises those fiscal problems to a new order of reality. And I think that's true of some of the political problems as well well. And listeners are of course very aware that you know, we just recently went through a pandemic of our own, and those of existential crises tend to simply reveal existing cracks and exacerbate them. And I think I agree with you that to a large extent, that's

what this did. Of course, it creates new problems of its own, but any existing problem, it is just going to dump fertilizer on top of I want to ask, because we're coming up on time, but I want to ask the last question you pause it in the book. I mean, I might not get the quotation exactly correct, but did Justinian ruin the empire that he set out to restore? And that I think is a fascinating question that reasonable people can discuss and maybe even come to different conclusions on. But

I want to ask, in your opinion, did he no? I think in short, it's true that in the second half of his reign in particular, and in the centuries of the decades ahead under his successors, the Empire would find mount face mounting social the mounting difficulties in the second half of the sixth century, we have ongoing problems with raising taxes. We have growing fiscal

instability that feed into growing political instability. Is later emperors have to try to cut back on expenditures, they try to restrain military pay and this will lead to military mutinies and civil war, which will then open the way of first Persian and then ultimately Arab conquests. So the Empire is clearly getting increasingly fragile and unstable after Justinian's reign. But I don't think we can causially connects that

instability to his policy agenda. Really, I think the growing travails of the empire and the second half of the sixth century and in the early seventh are really due to a phenomena which are primarily outside of Justinian's control in any meaningful sense. The five point thirty is the period of major climate change then problematizes

agriculture in a way that has economic consequences moving forward. We have the devastating outbreak the bubonic plague, which repeats itself and it's not a one hit wonder as it were. This is, you know, we have major outbreaks going through throughout the sixth and into the seventh centuries, it only peters out. In the eighth century, we have a renewed era of instability on Eurasian step that leads to the restward migration of a group known as the Avars. As

a results of their migration, new Barbarian fed will emerge. The Lombards will migrate into Italy, undoing Justinian's reconquest there. Slavs will start infiltrating the Roman position in the Balkans, hollowing out Roman power there. And as I say, in the aftermath of the Roman Persian Wars, when two each of these

empires are exhausted, the Arabs will arrive. But these are this unraveling of the empire that takes place in the early seventh century in particular, I think really is the result of cumulative problems resultant from these great external forces climate change, plague, migrations. The Justinian sitting in Constantinople, for all his claims to universal authority and autocratic omnipotence, could never really contain or contrast it.

Yeah, I agree, you know, I don't think that. I think it's unfair for us to assume that Justinian has more capabilities than the leader of a modern nation state. A modern nation state struggles with pandemics, they struggle with climate change, they struggle with huge external forces to expect Justinian, as you say, and I think it's point correct to point it out again sitting

in Constantinople. I mean, he may in the middle of the plague dispatch a letter to someone that by the time the letter has arrived is dead, and there isn't anything that he can do about that. You know, he is still dealing with the technological limitations of his age and trying to get things successful. You need to be highly skilled and you have to get a little

lucky it. Justinian had good luck to a large extent at the beginning of his reign through the middle in the second half not as much, and none of that is necessarily his fault. But anyway, well, we didn't get to talk about a lot of the book, but that's because it's an excellent book. It's very detailed. I really recommend it. I hope that people pick it up. We didn't talk at all about theology, and there's a huge portion of the book that's about that, and I know that my listeners

are going to be really interested in that. So the book is available right now if you're listening to this, and if you'd like to pick it up, you can click the link in the show notes and we'll go from there. But thank you so much for coming on. This was a wonderful conversation. Think it's suit you. S