Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

76 3. justin i and justinian
Capua in the summer of 554. 77 Justinian’s so-called Pragmatic Sanction of
13 August 554, regulating matters in Italy, was addressed to Narses; the
latter was still in Italy when pope Vigilius died while en route from
Constantinople (555), and present at the consecration of his successor
Pelagius (April 556).
Though technically it resulted in victory for Justinian and certainly
achieved its aim of defeating the Goths, the long war in Italy destroyed the
very structures it had sought to rescue. 78 Procopius movingly describes the
sufferings of the Roman aristocrats during the Gothic war; among them
was Rusticiana, the widow of Boethius, who with other Roman ladies was
reduced to begging for food during the siege of the city in 546, and was
rescued only by the intervention of Totila. 79 A number of the Italian aristocrats
went to the east in the 540s, where they put pressure on the court
as to the conduct of the final stages of the war, and contributed to a circle
of Latin letters in Constantinople. For the Byzantines, the Gothic war had
also been difficult: the attitude of the Romans in Italy was by no means
straightforwardly pro-Byzantine, and the Byzantine armies were often outnumbered
by those fielded by the Goths, while personal rivalries complicated
relations between the commanders in Italy and the government in
Constantinople. 80
During the 540s Justinian had to juggle the needs of the Italian front
against those caused by renewed hostilities in the east, while simultaneously
attempting a religious policy that produced as many anatagonisms as it
hoped to cure. Nor had the situation in Africa after the early victories been
straightforward: the conquest required a heavy investment of men and
resources, and the adverse effects first of mutiny in the Byzantine army and
then of Berber hostilities were only made good with difficulty by John
Troglita in 546–9, as Procopius admits. By the end of the sixth century
Africa seems to have recovered some of its old prosperity, but Corippus’
panegyric on the accession of Justin II in 565 laments the bad state of
affairs there, which John’s campaigns had not in themselves been enough
to reverse. 81
Justinian’s difficulties were increased by a severe outbreak of bubonic
plague, beginning in Egypt late in 541 and spreading in the following year
to the capital and the eastern provinces, from where it also passed to the
west. Repeated outbreaks were still being felt in places as far apart as Syria
and Britain in the seventh century, and the church historian Evagrius, a
77 These events are told by Agathias, Histories, Procopius’ narrative having ended with winter 553–4;
see PLRE iii, s.v. Narses 1, 920–2, with Cameron, Averil (1970).
78 See ch. 19 (Humphries), pp. 544,8 below. 79 Wars vii.20.27f., with Cameron, Procopius 192.
80 For these issues see Thompson (1982) chs. 5 and 6; Moorhead (1983).
81 Wars viii.17.22, cf. the exaggeratedly hostile picture at SH 18.4f. John Troglita’s campaigns are
described in the Iohannis, eight books of Latin hexameters by Corippus (ed. Goodyear and Diggle,
1970); see also Cor. In laudem Iustini, Pan. Anast. 37. See further ch. 20,p.552 below.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008