[859] John Eph., Hist. (Smith), loc. cit.
[860] Codinus, p. 108. On her return to Constantinople after the death of Theodora, Antonina broke off the match with Anastasius, although, in order to make sure of the alliance, the Empress had caused the young people to cohabit during their betrothal; Procopius, Anecd., 5.
[861] Evagrius, iv, 39, et seq.; Eustathius, Vit. Eutychii, etc.
[862] Theophanes, an. 6057, etc.
[863] The funeral and coronation scenes are described by Corippus in his poem, De Laud. Justini Min., i, 226, et seq., iii, 28, et seq., etc. Theophanes Byz. mentions a general of the East, "Theodore, son of Justinian," who is generally supposed to be a son of the Emperor by a concubine after the death of Theodora. Procopius gives an account of a youth whom the latter was attached to, but treated cruelly. He seems, however, not to have been a lover, but merely a protégé; Anecd., 16. Justinian figures in Dante's Paradise (vi), and has a whole canto to himself. He summarizes Roman history both before and after his own times, and confesses that he owes his salvation to having been converted from Monophysitism by Pope Agapetus.
[864] See pp. 345, 348, 441, 442, 454, 620.
[865] A fallacy seems to have gained currency that Procopius is pedantic because he nearly always calls Constantinople Byzantium. He could not do otherwise without being singular: the new name is scarcely ever used, except in official documents and ecclesiastical writers. It is to this persistence of the original title of the city that we owe the survival into modern times of the epithet Byzantine.
[866] See p. 514; cf. De Bel. Pers., ii, 9, 10; De Bel. Goth., i, 3, etc.
[867] The general ignorance of this age is well illustrated by the ridiculous account Procopius gives of Britain; De Bel. Goth., iv, 20. The island, he says, is divided longitudinally by a wall on account of the diversity of climatical conditions which prevail on the different sides. To the east the country is genial and salubrious, fertile with corn crops and fruit trees, and thickly populated. But on the west of the wall everything is the contrary, and no man could exist there, even for half an hour. The region is thronged with vipers, serpents innumerable, and poisonous beasts. And, what is hardly credible, if anyone should cross the wall, he at once succumbs fatally to the pestilential air—as the natives relate. But he thinks it must be altogether a fable when they say that the villagers on a certain part of the Gallic coast, who live as fishers and farmers are absolved from payment of taxes on condition of their ferrying the souls of the dead across the ocean to this adjacent isle of Britain. In tempestuous weather, at the dead of night, they are summoned from their beds, and have to rush to the sea-shore. There they find numbers of apparently empty boats. They have to seize the oars and row for a day and a night. When they start, the vessels are weighed down to the water's edge, but on returning, they are so light as barely to skim the surface. Yet all the time they see no one; but when landing the souls, they hear a voice calling out the names and titles of each of the deceased. Procopius also makes an excursion into British history, which is, perhaps, no more authentic than his ghostly narrative. The Franks, he informs us, claimed some extent of suzerainty over the island, and when they sent a legation to Justinian in 548, they included, for the sake of ostentation, a number of Angles in the party. He goes on to relate that a prince of the Varni, a nation occupying lands to the north of the Rhine over against Britain, had betrothed his son Radiger to a British maid, the sister of the King of the Angles. He had himself recently taken, as his second wife, a sister of Theodebert, the Frankish monarch. Soon afterwards, finding himself on his death-bed, he exhorted his son to marry his step-mother, a connection permitted by their law, as being more to the interest of the Varni than the British alliance. On his father's decease, Radiger obeyed these instructions, whereupon the British princess, indignant at being jilted, assembled an army of one hundred thousand, under one of her brothers' generalship, and invaded the country of her faithless lover. Procopius explains that all this force consisted of infantry, since the islanders had never even seen a horse. A great battle was fought, in which the Varni were defeated and put to flight. Radiger being taken prisoner, was brought before the martial princess, who reproached him severely for his conduct towards her. He excused himself by pointing out the various necessities which had weighed upon him, but expressed his present willingness to fulfil his first contract of marriage. His offer was accepted, and ultimately the nuptials of Radiger and the English princess were peacefully solemnized; ibid.
[868] Anecd., praef.