VOL. I
SECOND EDITION
LONDON
G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
1912
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
PREFACE
Although the age of Justinian is the most interesting and important in the whole series of the Byzantine annals, no comprehensive work has hitherto been devoted to the subject. The valuable and erudite “Vita Justiniani” of Ludewig is more of a law book than of a biography, and less of a circumstantial history than of either. The somewhat strange medley published by Isambert under the title “Vie de Justinien” is scarcely a complete chronology of the events, and might be called a manual of the sources rather than a history of the times.[1] Excellent accounts, however, of Justinian are to be found in some general histories of the Byzantine Empire as well as in several biographical dictionaries, whilst monographs of greater or lesser extent exist under the names of Perrinus, Invernizi, and Padovani, etc., but any student of the period would decide that it deserves to be treated at much greater length than has been devoted to it in any of these books. In the present work the design has been to place before the reader not only a record of events, but a presentment of the people amongst whom, and of the stage upon which those events occurred. I have also attempted to correlate the aspects of the ancient and the modern world in relation to science and progress.
W. G. H.
London,
February, 1905.
PREFATORY NOTE TO SECOND EDITION
This work has now been carefully revised and slightly enlarged. I am indebted to suggestions from various reviewers of the first edition for several of the improvements introduced. Occasionally, however, they are in error and at variance among themselves on some of the points noted. A few of my critics have accused me of being too discursive, especially in my notes, an impression which is the natural result of my not having expressed it definitely anywhere that my object was to present not merely the sociology and events of a particular period, but also to illustrate, in an abridged sense, the history of all time.