Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

Justinian the Great and his successors (518-610)

Literature, learning, and art 

Page 4

Justinian's ambassador to the Saracens and Abyssinians, Nonnosus, wrote a description of his distant journey. Time has preserved only one fragment, which is found in the works of the Patriarch Photius; but even this fragment gives excellent data on the nature and ethnography of the countries he visited. Photius also preserved a fragment of the history of Theophanes of Byzantium, who wrote at the end of the sixth century and probably covered in his work the period from the time of Justinian to the first years of the reign of Maurice. This fragment is important because it contains evidence bearing on the introduction of sericulture in the Byzantine Empire and includes also one of the earliest references to the Turks. Another source particularly valuable for church history of the fifth and sixth centuries is the work of Evagrius of Syria, who died at the end of the sixth century. His Ecclesiastical History in six books is a continuation of histories written by Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret. It contains an account of events from the Council of Ephesus, in the year 431, to the year 593. In addition to information on ecclesiastical events, it contains also interesting data on the general history of the period.

John the Lydian was distinguished for his excellent education, and Justinian thought so highly of him that he commissioned him to write an imperial panegyric. Besides other works, John left a treatise On the Administration (magistrates) of the Roman State, which has not yet been sufficiently studied and evaluated. It contains numerous interesting facts about the internal organization of the Empire and may serve as a valuable supplement to The Secret History of Procopius.

The manifold significance of The Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes, the broad geographical scale of which so closely corresponded to Justinian's sweeping projects, has been discussed. To the field of geography also belongs the statistical survey of the Eastern Roman Empire of Justinian's period, which came from the pen of the grammarian Hierocles, and bears the title of A Fellow-Traveler of Hierocles (Συνέκδημος; Synecdemus; Vademecum). The author does not center his survey about the ecclesiastical, but rather about the political geography of the Empire, with its sixty-four provinces and 912 cities. It is impossible to determine whether this survey was a product of Hierocles' own initiative or a result of a commission received from some high authority. In any event, in the dry survey of Hierocles exists an excellent source for determining the political position of the Empire at the beginning of Justinian's reign. Hierocles was the principal source for geographical matters for Constantine Porphyrogenitus.

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