![]() ![]() He also wrote that under Justinian's reign in 560, a major Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary was built on the site of the Temple Mount. Should this information be correct, Procopius would have had a seat in Constantinople's senate, which was restricted to the illustres under Justinian. However, the Suda, which is usually well informed in such matters, also describes Procopius himself as one of the illustres. He thus belonged to the mid-ranking group of the senatorial order ( ordo senatorius). When Belisarius was sent back to Italy in 544 to cope with a renewal of the war with the Goths, now led by the able king Totila, Procopius appears to have no longer been on Belisarius's staff.Īs magister militum, Belisarius was an "illustrious man" ( Latin: vir illustris Greek: ἰλλούστριος, illoústrios) being his adsessor, Procopius must therefore have had at least the rank of a "visible man" ( vir spectabilis). Both the Wars and the Secret History suggest that his relationship with Belisarius cooled thereafter. He witnessed Belisarius's entry into the Gothic capital, Ravenna, in 540. He rejoined Belisarius for his campaign against the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy and experienced the Gothic siege of Rome that lasted a year and nine days, ending in mid-March 538. Procopius recorded a few of the extreme weather events of 535–536, although these were presented as a backdrop to Byzantine military activities, such as a mutiny in and around Carthage. ![]() In 533, he accompanied Belisarius on his victorious expedition against the Vandal kingdom in North Africa, took part in the capture of Carthage, and remained in Africa with Belisarius's successor Solomon the Eunuch when Belisarius returned east to the capital. Procopius witnessed the Nika riots of January, 532, which Belisarius and his fellow general Mundus repressed with a massacre in the Hippodrome. Procopius was with Belisarius on the eastern front until the latter was defeated at the Battle of Callinicum in 531 and recalled to Constantinople. In 527, the first year of the reign of the emperor Justinian I, he became the legal adviser ( adsessor) for Belisarius, a general whom Justinian made his chief military commander in a great attempt to restore control over the lost western provinces of the empire. He evidently knew Latin, as was natural for a man with legal training. He may have attended law school, possibly at Berytus (present-day Beirut) or Constantinople (now Istanbul), and became a lawyer ( rhetor). He would have received a conventional upper class education in the Greek classics and rhetoric, perhaps at the famous school at Gaza. He was a native of Caesarea in the province of Palaestina Prima. Apart from his own writings the main source for Procopius's life was an entry in the Suda, a Byzantine Greek encyclopaedia written sometime after 975 which discusses his early life. ![]()
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