The Secret History - Procopius, The Athenian Society

Procopius, The Athenian Society

Category: Classic

Narrator: James Cameron Stewart

Tags: Classic, History, Literature

Duration: 5 hrs and 2 mins, [Translated by The Athenian Society], The Secret History, written by the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius, is one of the most extraordinary and scandalous documents to have survived from the early Byzantine period., Procopius, the leading official historian of his time, lived during the testing and indulgent time of Emperor Justinian the Great and wrote the official records of the successful wars and the grand building projects of his ruler. These were words of aggrandisement. But covertly, Procopius kept a very different record: The Secret History, a vivid, salacious and detailed account of the outrageous behaviour of Justinian and his wife, Theodora, and the equally corrupt, licentious and cruel members of the court and administration of the time., Secrecy was a necessary precaution for Procopius to prevent a painful and untimely death, for Justinian emerges as a grasping, ruthless and unprincipled ruler who would do anything to increase his wea