THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN LATE ANTIQUITYunderline the lesson that victory belonged to the emperor, albeit a civilian
one. But the next two decades were to prove much more diffi cult than had
been anticipated. A new and more recalcitrant military threat immediately pre-
sented itself from the Berber tribes (Mauri), unforeseen by the easterners and
conspicuously lacking in Procopius’ narrative of the early stages of the recon-
quest, as well as from a mutiny in the Byzantine army; and while the eunuch
general Solomon, and then John Troglita, fought successful, if hard, cam-
paigns, the problem of dealing with hostile Berbers did not go away.^49 John
of Biclar, a well-informed chronicler who lived in Constantinople, records
what was evidently a dangerous situation in the 560s and early 570s, and there
was more fi ghting in the 580s and 590s.^50 The condition of Africa is painted
in gloomy terms in the 560s by the African poet Corippus who had come to
Constantinople and composed a Latin panegyric on the accession of Justini-
an’s successor, Justin II (565–78); on the whole, however, the province seems
to have attained a reasonable degree of peace and prosperity by the later sixth
century, and the expedition which was to overthrow Phocas in 609–10 and put
Heraclius on the throne in Constantinople was dispatched from Carthage.
Africa was rich and fertile; the reconquest made its grain available for Con-
stantinople, and its oil production reached a height in the seventh century,
when according to later Arabic sources it was immensely rich. Justinian’s
regulatory law laid down provisions for a civil administration of 750 persons
(staffed from the east), whose salaries amounted to over 17,500 solidi per year.
In addition there was the cost of the military hierarchy, perhaps 500 strong,
and the army itself.^51 Added to this regular expenditure was the special cost
of defensive and other building works; these were necessary after a century of
Vandal rule and in order to secure the reconquest. The imposition of imme-
diate taxation was obviously a priority, as Procopius also recognized.^52 Thus
having got rid of the Vandals, with whom many will have made a reasonable
accommodation, the ‘Roman’ inhabitants, still Latin-speaking and with their
religious loyalties centred on Rome, found themselves faced not only with
heavy taxes and military rule, but with a situation in which the army billeted in
their towns was by no means always able to defend them against an increasing
threat of Berber raids. If Procopius’ picture of Africa in the Wars is somewhat
mixed, that in the Secret History is one of unrelieved gloom:
Libya, for instance, in spite of its enormous size, has been laid so utterly
waste that however far one went it would be a remarkable achievement to
fi nd a single person there.
(Secret History 18)In addition to their military and economic impositions, the newcomers used
Greek instead of Latin, as the many surviving offi cial seals make clear. By
the mid-seventh century a formal debate in Carthage between the Monothe-
lite patriarch Pyrrhus of Constantinople and Maximus Confessor was held in
Greek (Chapter 9). Justinian had embarked on the war against the Vandals