Читать книгу Of the Buildings of Justinian - Procopius - Страница 7

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I have not begun this work through any desire to make a display of my own virtue, or trusting to my powers of language, or wishing to gain credit by my knowledge of the places described, for I had nothing to encourage me to undertake so bold a project. But I have often reflected on the great blessings which countries derive from history, which transmits to posterity the remembrance of our ancestors, and opposes the efforts of time to cover them with oblivion; which always encourages virtue in its readers by its praise, and deters them from vice by its blame, and in this way destroys its power. All we need study then is to make clear what has been done, and by whom of mankind it was done; and this, I imagine, is not impossible even for the weakest and feeblest writer; besides this, the writing of history enables subjects who have been kindly treated by their rulers, to express their gratitude, and to make a more than adequate return, seeing that they only for a time enjoy the goodness of their princes, while they render their virtues immortal in the memory of their descendants, many of whom in this very way have been led by the glory of their ancestors to a love of virtue, and have been probably preserved from a dissolute course of life by the dread of disgrace. I will shortly explain my object in making these prefatory remarks.

The Emperor Justinian was born in our time,[1] and succeeding to the throne when the state was decayed, added greatly to its extent and glory by driving out from it the barbarians, who for so long a time had forced their way into it, as I have briefly narrated in my ‘History of the Wars.’ They say that Themistocles, the son of Neocles, prided himself on his power of making a small state great, but our Emperor has the power of adding other states to his own, for he has annexed to the Roman Empire many other states which at his accession were independent, and has founded innumerable cities which had no previous existence. As for religion, which he found uncertain and torn by various heresies, he destroyed everything which could lead to error, and securely established the true faith upon one solid foundation. Moreover, finding the laws obscure through their unnecessary multitude, and confused by their conflict with one another, he firmly established them by reducing the number of those which were unnecessary, and in the case of those that were contradictory, by confirming the better ones. He forgave of his own accord those who plotted against him, and, by loading with wealth those who were in want, and relieving them from the misfortunes which had afflicted them, he rendered the empire stable and its members happy. By increasing his armies he strengthened the Roman Empire, which lay everywhere exposed to the attacks of barbarians, and fortified its entire frontier by building strong places. Of his other acts the greater part have been described by me in other works, but his great achievements in building are set forth in this book. We learn from tradition that Cyrus the Persian was a great king, and the chief founder of the empire of his countrymen; but whether he had any resemblance to that Cyrus who is described by Xenophon the Athenian in his Cyropædia, I have no means of telling, for possibly the art of the writer has given some embellishments to his achievements; while as for our present Emperor Justinian (whom I think one may rightly call a king by nature, since, as Homer says, he is as gentle as a father), if one accurately considers his empire, one will regard that of Cyrus as mere child’s play.[2] The proof of this will be that the empire, as I just now said, has been more than doubled by him, both in extent and in power; whilst his royal clemency is proved by the fact that those who wickedly plotted against his life, although they were clearly convicted, not only are alive and in possession of their property at the present day, but even command Roman armies, and have been promoted to the consular dignity. Now, as I said before, we must turn our attention to the buildings of this monarch, lest posterity, beholding the enormous size and number of them, should deny their being the work of one man; for the works of many men of former times, not being confirmed by history, have been disbelieved through their own excessive greatness. As is natural, the foundation of all my account will be the buildings in Byzantium, for, as the old proverb has it, when we begin a work we ought to put a brilliant frontispiece to it.