The Secret History
Translated by Richard Atwater
Procopius wrote this account of the court and government of Justinian and Theodora in the sixth century. It describes Belisarius, imperial administration, taxation and the conduct of the emperor and empress, in Richard Atwater’s 1927 English translation.
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The opening
I
How the Great General Belisarius Was Hoodwinked by His Wife, Whose Lover Became a Monk
The father of Belisarius’s wife, a lady whom I have mentioned in my former books, was (and so was her grandfather) a charioteer, exhibiting that trade in Constantinople and Thessalonica. Her mother was one of the wenches of the theater; and she herself from the first led an utterly wanton life. Acquainted with magic drugs used by her parents before her, she learned how to use those of compelling qualities and became the wedded wife of Belisarius, after having already borne many children.
Now she was unfaithful as a wife from the start, but was careful to conceal her indiscretions by the usual precautions; not from any awe of her spouse (for she never felt any shame at anything, and fooled him easily with her deceptions), but because she feared the punishment of the Empress. For Theodora hated her, and had already shown her teeth. But when that Queen became involved in difficulties, she won her friendship by helping her, first to destroy Silverius, as shall be related presently, and later to ruin John of Cappadocia, as I have told elsewhere. After that, she became more and more fearless, and casting all concealment aside, abandoned herself to the winds of desire.
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About this edition
- The words
- Richard Atwater's English translation, copied word for word.
- Copied from
Procopius, The Secret History, completed in the sixth century; translated from Greek by Richard Atwater in 1927. Standard Ebooks text based on an Internet Sacred Text Archive transcription and Google Books scans; printed publisher not identified in the local source. Source library: Standard Ebooks; its digital edition is dedicated to the public domain.
- Left out
- The title page and opening pages before chapter 1, in 2 places
- Pictures and their captions
- Standard Ebooks' imprint
- A preface, foreword or afterword
- Notes and pages added by translators, editors or publishers, in 3 places
- Notes about a stage production
- Standard Ebooks' public-domain dedication page
- Kept as written
Its accounts of violence, sexual conduct and religious persecution, and its language about peoples and religions, are kept as the author wrote them.