Emperor Justinian

The story

From peasant to emperor

Justinian was born around AD 482 at Tauresium, a village in the Balkans (now in North Macedonia). His family spoke Latin, not Greek, the language used at Constantinople. His good fortune was his uncle on his mother's side, Justin, a soldier who became emperor in 518 and called his nephew to his side. Justinian studied, made a career and in 521 became consul. He was the emperor's real right-hand man.

On 1 April 527 Justin named him Augustus, that is, made him emperor together with himself. On 1 August of the same year his uncle died and Justinian remained the sole ruler. He governed for thirty-eight years, until 14 November 565.

An extraordinary wife

Beside him was Theodora. According to the historian Procopius of Caesarea, who however hated her and spoke very badly of her in a secret work, as a young woman she had been a stage actress, a trade that the Roman nobles despised. We know less for certain than we would like: she was probably born at Constantinople around 495-500, the daughter of a man who looked after the animals of a team at the hippodrome. Justinian met her around 522. To allow the marriage, his uncle the emperor had to change a law that forbade marriage between a citizen of rank and a woman of the theatre. When Justinian became emperor, Theodora was crowned Augusta, and she took part in the decisions of government more than empresses before her had done.

The Nika riot

In January 532 the capital came close to overthrowing the emperor. Constantinople had a great hippodrome, where chariot races were held, and the supporters' groups, called “factions” and told apart by their colours, were also political groups. The factions joined together against the emperor, shouting “Nika!”, that is, “Win!”. For a few days a large part of the city went up in flames, and the church of Hagia Sophia was destroyed too.

Justinian thought of fleeing. It is told, once again by Procopius, that Theodora persuaded him to stay: an emperor, she is said to have declared, must not abandon the throne. The generals Belisarius and Narses crushed the revolt in the hippodrome, and many thousands of people were killed: according to Procopius as many as thirty thousand. Straight afterwards the emperor had the church rebuilt, larger and more beautiful than before: the Hagia Sophia we talk about in another event.

The dream of reconquering the West

Justinian was convinced that he must bring the lost lands back under a single emperor. In 533 he sent the general Belisarius against the Vandals in North Africa: the enterprise succeeded in a few months, and in April 534 the new provinces had an imperial government. Then he turned to Italy, where the Ostrogoths ruled. Belisarius conquered Sicily in 535 and Rome in 536, but the war dragged on for almost twenty years. Only in 552, with Narses' victory in the battle of Taginae, were the Goths defeated for good. The conquest was completed in 562, with the surrender of Brescia and Verona. Around 551-552 the emperor also intervened in the south of Spain, taking advantage of a civil war among the Visigoths.

But the war in Italy was long and costly: cities, countryside and roads came out of it in ruins.

An emperor who built

At home Justinian was a reformer. He had the Roman laws collected and put in order in the Corpus iuris civilis, rebuilt Hagia Sophia and had churches, fortresses, bridges and aqueducts built all over the empire. According to tradition, two monks brought to Constantinople, hidden in hollow canes, silkworm eggs that came from China: from then on the empire had its own silk production, which became a very important industry.

His last years were harder. In 542 a terrible plague epidemic reached Constantinople which, according to modern historians' estimates, killed between a fifth and two fifths of the population; another outbreak followed in 558. Theodora died on 28 June 548, perhaps of cancer. Justinian outlived her by seventeen years. He died in 565, by then very old, and the throne passed to Justin II.

How we remember him

For the Byzantines he was a great emperor, but some of his contemporaries judged him harshly: the wars and the taxes had made his subjects poorer. After his death many of the lands conquered in the West were soon lost. What remains is the enormous legacy of his laws and his buildings, which have lasted almost fifteen centuries.