most probably in 483 at Tauresium, on the borders of Illyricum and Macedonia, a spot probably a little S. of Uskiub, the ancient Scupi (see Procop. Aedif. iv. 1, and Tozer, Highlands of European Turkey, ii. p. 370). After his accession he built at his birthplace a city which he named Justiniana Prima and made the capital of the province and seat of an archbishop. [The tale regarding his Slavonic origin started by Alemanni in his notes to the Anecdota of Procopius seems to be baseless; see art. in Eng. Hist. Rev. Oct. 1887, by the present writer.] Early in life he came to Constantinople, and attached himself to his uncle Justin, who, serving in the imperial guards under the emperors Zeno and Anastasius, had risen to high place. At Constantinople Justinian diligently studied law, theology, and general literature, and the influence of his uncle doubtless procured him employment in the civil service of the state. When Justinian was 35, the emperor Anastasius was succeeded by Justin, an illiterate soldier, weakened by age, to whom the help of his more active nephew was almost indispensable. Ecclesiastical affairs and the general administration of the state fell under the control of Justinian. He became co-emperor in 527, and on Justin's death, a month later, assumed without question the sole sovereignty of the Roman world, retaining it till his death in 565, at the age of 82, when he was peaceably succeeded by his nephew Justin II.
In 526 he married Theodora, a woman of singular beauty, and still more remarkable charms of manner and intellect, said to have been a native of Cyprus and a comedian. The gossip of the time, starting from this undoubted fact, has accumulated in the Anecdota, or unpublished memoirs, ascribed to, and no doubt written by (although there has been a controversy on the point), Procopius, a variety of scandalous tales regarding her earlier career. [THEODORA.] She soon acquired an almost unbounded dominion over Justinian's mind, and was commonly regarded as the source of many of his schemes and enterprises. She died in 548, and he did not marry again.
Most of what we know directly about Justinian comes from PROCOPIUS, which does not diminish the difficulty of forming a comprehensive and consistent view of his abilities and character. For Procopius wrote of him with servility in his lifetime, and reviled him in the Anecdota, a singular book which did not come to light till long afterwards. Setting aside exaggerations in both directions, it may be concluded that Justinian was a man of considerable, if not first-rate, abilities. He was well educated, according to the ideas and customs of the time, and more or less conversant with many branches of knowledge. Procopius accuses him of being a barbarian both in mind and speech, which probably means only that he spoke Greek like an Illyrian provincial (Anecd. c. 14). His artistic taste is shewn by the many beautiful buildings which he erected, two among which—those of St. Sophia at Constantinople and St. Vitalis at Ravenna (though it does not appear that he had any share in designing this latter)—have had the unique distinction of becoming architectural models for subsequent ages, the one for the East, and the other for the West. Several hymns still used in the orthodox Eastern church are ascribed to his pen, and he is the author of a treatise against the Monophysites, which Cardinal Mai has published. The records of his government and administration shew that he possessed great ingenuity and enterprise; but the enterprise was often prompted more by vanity and lust of power than by regard to the welfare of his people, and his ingenuity was not guided by prudence or by a solid knowledge of the economical conditions of prosperity. There was much more cleverness than wisdom about him; we see in his policy few indications of deep and statesmanlike foresight. The chief feature of his character is his extraordinary industry. He seemed to live for work, and toiled harder than any of his own clerks. He was naturally abstemious and regular in life, observing the church fasts very strictly, able to go long without food, taking little sleep, and spending most of his time, when not actually giving audiences, in pacing up and down the rooms of the palace listening to readers or dictating to an amanuensis. He cared little for vulgar pleasures (though he shewed an excessive partiality for the blue faction, he does not appear to have been personally addicted to the games of the circus), and yielded to no influences except those of his wife Theodora. We are told that he was easy of access—a rare merit in the despotic centre of a highly formal court—pleasant and reassuring in manner, but also deceitful and capable of treachery and ingratitude. How far this ingratitude was in the most notable case, that of Belisarius, excused by apprehensions of danger, is a problem not wholly solved or soluble. Wantonly cruel he does not seem to have been, and on several occasions shewed an unexpected clemency, but he shrank from no severities that his intellect judged useful.
In person he was well formed, rather above the middle height, with a ruddy and smiling countenance. Besides his effigy on coins, we have two probably contemporary portraits among the mosaics of Ravenna—one in the apse of the church of San Vitale, built in his reign, in which he appears among a number of other figures; the other now preserved in the noble church of Sant’ Apollinare in Urbe.
II. The political events of his reign may be read in Procopius, Agathias, Theophanes (all three in the Bonn ed. of the Byzantine historians), in the ecclesiastical history of Evagrius, in Gibbon (see cc. xl.–xliii. for a full and brilliant picture of Justinian's times), and in Le Beau (Histoire du bas empire, vols. viii. and ix., with St. Martin's notes). Finlay (Greece under the Romans, vol. i. of new ed.) has some valuable remarks, as also Hertzberg, Griechenland unter der Römer, vol. iii.; see also Dahn, Prokopios von Caesarea. At Justinian's accession the empire was generally at peace. An expedition was dispatched in 533, under Belisarius, which landed in Africa without opposition and reduced the whole Vandal kingdom to submission in little more than three months. The Vandals who survived seem to have been rapidly absorbed into the African population; anyhow, we hear no more of them. The fleet of Belisarius received
