Procopius

One of the chief sources of the Gothic Wars and of 6th century Byzantine history is Procopius of Caesarea (c.500 - c.565), a Greek scholar and historian from Palestine. Besides writing Words on the Wars, he also wrote something now called Secret History because it contained anecdotes dotes that would be dangerous to him if published in the lifetime of his subjects, and On Buildings, a book about Emperor Justinian's public works.Justinian came to the throne in 527, and in that same year Preocopius became the legal advisor to Justinian's chief military commander, Belisarius. Procopius followed Belisarius through his various campaigns, both losses and victories, in places as varied as the banks of the Euphrates, Constantinople (where Belisarius suppressed riots with mass executions in the Hippodrome), the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa, and the wars in Italy to re-unite the Western Roman Empire with the Eastern.Historian Edward Gibbon claimed that Procopius "successively composed the…