Of the Buildings of Justinian

by Procopius

FORTIFICATIONS AT DARA.
From Texier & Pullan’s Byzantine Architecture

It occurred to the Emperor Justinian that the Persians would not, as far as lay in their power, permit this Roman fortress to stand threatening them, but that they would march against it with their entire force, and use every device to assault its walls on equal terms; and that a number of elephants would accompany them, bearing wooden towers upon their backs, which towers instead of foundations would rest upon the elephants, who—and this was the worst of all—could manœuvre round the city at the pleasure of the enemy, and carry a wall which could be moved whithersoever its masters might think fit; and the enemy, mounted upon these towers, would shoot down upon the heads of the Romans within the walls, and assail them from above; they would also pile up mounds of earth against the walls, and bring up to them all the machines used in sieges; while if any misfortune should befall the city of Dara, which was an outwork of the entire Roman Empire and a standing menace to the enemy’s country, the evil would not rest there, but the whole state would be endangered to a great extent. Moved by these considerations he determined to fortify the place in a manner worthy of its value.

In the first place,[35] therefore, since the wall was, as I have described, very low, and therefore easily assailable, he rendered it inaccessible and altogether impregnable. He placed stones which so contracted the original battlements as only to leave small traces of them, like windows, allowing just so much opening to them as a hand could be passed through, so that passages were left through which arrows could be shot against the assailants. Above these he built a wall to a height of about thirty feet, not making the wall of the same thickness all the way to the top, lest the foundations should be over-weighted by the mass above, and the whole work be ruined; but he surrounded the upper part with a course of stones, and built a portico extending round the entire circuit of the walls, above which he placed the battlements, so that the wall was throughout constructed of two stories, and the towers of three stories, which could be manned by the defenders to repel the attacks of the enemy; for over the middle of the towers he constructed a vaulted roof, and again built new battlements above it, thus making them into a fortification consisting of three stories.

After this, though he saw, as I have said before, that many of the towers had after a short time fallen into ruin, yet he was not able to take them down, because the enemy were always close at hand, watching their opportunity, and always trying to find some unprotected part of the fortifications. He therefore devised the following plan: he left these towers where they were, and outside of each of them he constructed another building with great skill, in a quadrangular form, well and securely built. In the same manner he securely protected the ruinous parts of the walls with a second wall. One of these towers, which was called the Watchtower, he seized an opportunity of demolishing, rebuilt it securely, and everywhere removed all fear of want of strength from the walls. He wisely built the outside part of the wall to a sufficient height, in due proportion; outside of it he dug a ditch, not in the way in which men usually make one, but in a small space, and in a different fashion. With what object he did this, I will now explain.

The greater part of the walls are inaccessible to besiegers, because they do not stand upon level ground, nor in such a manner as would favour an attack, but upon high precipitous rocks where it would not be possible to undermine them, or to make any assault upon them; but upon the side turned towards the south, the ground, which is soft and earthy and easily dug, renders the city assailable. Here, therefore, he dug a crescent-shaped ditch, deep and wide, and reaching to a considerable distance. Each end of this ditch joined the city wall, and by filling it with water he rendered it altogether impassable to the enemy. On the inner side of it he built a second wall, upon which during a siege the Roman soldiers keep guard, without fear for the walls themselves and for the other outwork which stands before the city. Between the city wall and this outwork, opposite the gate which leads towards Ammodius, there was a great mound, from which the enemy were able to drive mines towards the city unperceived. This he entirely removed, and levelled the spot, so as to put it out of the enemy’s power to assault the place from thence.

II. Thus did Justinian fortify this stronghold;[36] he also constructed reservoirs of water between the city walls and the outwork, and very close to the Church of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, on the west side. A river runs from the suburb called Corde, distant about two miles from the city. Upon either side of it rise two exceedingly rugged mountains. Between the slopes of these mountains the river runs as far as the city, and since it flows at the foot of them, it is not possible for an enemy to divert or meddle with its stream, for they cannot force it out of the hollow ground. It is directed into the city in the following manner. The inhabitants have built a great channel leading to the walls, the mouth of which is closed with numerous thick bars of iron, some upright and some placed crosswise, so as to enable the water to enter the city, without injury to the strength of its fortifications. Thus the river enters the city, and after having filled these reservoirs, and been led hither and thither at the pleasure of the inhabitants, passes into another part of the city, where there is an outfall constructed for it in the same way as its entrance. The river in its progress through the flat country made the city in former times easy to be besieged, for it was not difficult for an enemy to encamp there, because water was plentiful. The Emperor Justinian considered this state of things, and tried to find some remedy for it; God, however, assisted him in his difficulty, took the matter into His own hands, and without delay ensured the safety of the city. This took place in the following manner.

One of the garrison of the city, either in consequence of a dream or led of his own accord to it, collected together a great number of the workmen engaged in building the fortifications, and ordered them to dig a long trench in a certain place, which he pointed out to them, a considerable distance within the city wall, declaring that they would there find sweet water flowing out of the ground. He dug this trench in a circular form, making the depth of it for the most part about fifteen feet. This work proved the saving of the city, not through any foresight of the workmen, yet, by means of this trench, what would have been a misfortune was turned into a great advantage to the Romans; for, as during this time very heavy rain fell, the river, of which I just spoke, raged outside the fortifications and rose to a great height, being unable to proceed, because when it was swollen to such a size neither the channel nor the entrances in the wall were large enough to contain it, as they had been before. It consequently piled up its waters against the wall, rising to a great height and depth, and in some places was stagnant, and in others rough and violent. It at once overthrew the outwork, swept away a great part of the city wall, forced its way through the city gates, and, running with a great body of water, occupied almost the whole city, invading both the market-place, the narrower streets, and the houses themselves, swept off from them a great mass of furniture, wooden vessels, and such like things, and then, falling into this trench, disappeared under ground. Not many days afterwards it reappeared near to the city of Theodosiopolis, at a place about forty miles distant from the city of Dara, where it was recognised by the things which it had swept away out of the houses at Dara, for there the whole mass of them reappeared. Since that period, in time of peace and quiet, the river flows through the midst of the city, fills the reservoirs with water, and passes out of the city through the outfall especially constructed for it by the builders of the city, which I described above, and, as it supplies that region with water, becomes a great boon to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. When, however, a hostile army advances to besiege the city, they close the passages through the iron gratings with what are called sluice-doors, and at once force the river to change its course and to flow into the trench and the subterranean gulf beyond, so that the enemy suffer from want of water and are at once obliged to raise the siege. Indeed Mirrhanes, the Persian general, in the reign of Cabades, came thither to besiege the city, and was compelled by all these difficulties to retire baffled after a short time; and a long while afterwards, Chosroes himself advanced with the same intentions, and attacked the city with a numerous army; but being driven to great straits through want of water, and perceiving the height of the walls, he imagined the place to be entirely impregnable, gave up his project, and straightway retired into Persia, being out-generalled by the foresight of the Roman Emperor.

III. Such were the works of the Emperor Justinian in the city of Dara. I shall now describe what he arranged to prevent any second misfortune happening to the city from the river, in which matter his wishes were manifestly assisted by Heaven. There was one Chryses of Alexandria, a clever engineer, who served the Emperor as an architect, and constructed most of the works both in the city of Dara and in the rest of the country. This Chryses was absent when the misfortune from the river befell the city of Dara; when he heard of it, he retired to bed in great grief, and dreamed the following dream: A figure of more than human stature appeared to him, and showed and explained to him a device which would protect the city from any dangerous inundation of the river. He, conceiving this idea to be divinely inspired, at once wrote an account of the device and of the vision, and sent it to the Emperor, giving a sketch of what he had been taught in his dream. It happened that not long before this a message reached the Emperor from the city of Dara, giving him an account of what had happened with the river. Thereupon the Emperor, disturbed and alarmed at what had taken place, straightway summoned those most celebrated architects, Anthemius and Isidorus, whom I have mentioned before. He informed them of what had happened, and inquired what arrangement could be devised to prevent this mischief befalling the city a second time. Each of them described what he considered to be a suitable plan for this purpose; but the Emperor, evidently acting under a divine impulse, although he had not yet seen the letter of Chryses, miraculously invented and sketched out of his own mind the plan suggested by the dream. The interview terminated without the adoption of any distinct plan, and without their deciding upon what was to be done; but three days afterwards came a messenger to the Emperor, who brought the letter from Chryses, and who explained the form of the arrangement which he had seen in his dream. The Emperor now again sent for the architects, and ordered them to recall to mind their former ideas of what ought to be done. They repeated everything in order, both their own devices and the spontaneous inventions of the Emperor; after which the Emperor brought forward the messenger sent from Chryses, and showing them the letter and the sketch of what he had seen in his dream, caused them to wonder greatly, when they perceived how Heaven had assisted our Emperor in everything for the advantage of the Empire. The plan of the Emperor accordingly won the day, and triumphed over the art and learning of the architects. Chryses returned to the city of Dara, with orders from the Emperor to carry out the work which he had described with all speed, according to the plan revealed in the dream. He carried out his orders in the following manner.