JUSTINIAN AND RECONQUESTprobably, though not certainly, Justinianic, shows what we would naturally
have expected – a mixture of classicizing and traditional motifs; the same goes
for the ivory diptych showing the Archangel Michael in the British Museum,
one of the masterpieces of the period. But these are not known to have been
imperially sponsored; nor are the famous mosaics of Justinian and Theodora
at Ravenna, or indeed, even though the monastery itself was a Justinianic
foundation, the great Sinai icons of Christ, the Virgin with angels and St Peter
which are usually – though not by all – held to be Justinianic. The church of
St Sophia in Constantinople (Figure 1.2), described in detail by Procopius in
book I of the Buildings and by Paul the Silentiary in his hexameter poem on
the rededication of the dome in January AD 563 after it had been damaged by
earthquake, is a masterpiece, but it is not classical at all.^80
Similar problems arise with the literary texts. In one sense, the reign is rich
in classicizing literature, from Procopius’ own works to the clever classical epi-
grams by Paul the Silentiary (a palace offi cial) and several other offi ce-holders
such as Macedonius the consul and Julian the prefect, which were collected by
Agathias and eventually passed into the Greek Anthology.^81 Both the technical
expertise and the reading public were evidently still present. Literary production
in the sixth century depended not only on the level of education and the circu-
lation of books but also on patronage, and Procopius claims that the Buildings
was an imperial commission, while Paul the Silentiary’s poem on the restored
St Sophia, written in formal hexameters, is a formal panegyric composed for an
imperial occasion.^82 On the other hand, imperial themes were also addressed in
the elaborate rhythmical kontakia (liturgical hymns) by the deacon Romanos,
performed as part of the liturgy in a church of the Theotokos in Constantinople
to which he was attached, and infl uenced by Syriac poetry and homiletic, and
Justinian’s reign saw the composition of the fi rst important Byzantine chronicle,
that of John Malalas.^83 All these writers used Greek, but Latin literature was also
still being composed in Constantinople, including the Chronicle of Marcellinus,
an early Illyrian protégé of Justinian, a short treatise by Junillus the quaestor and
Jordanes’ Gothic and Roman histories (Chapter 2). The number of educated
Latin-speakers was augmented by the arrival of the exiles from Gothic Italy
after 540, who included Cassiodorus, whose work on the Psalms was written in
Constantinople. The monastery Cassiodorus founded at Squillace on his return
to Italy became one of the most important medieval centres for copying manu-
scripts, while Cassiodorus’s own Institutes was one of the most infl uential texts
in the transmission of classical learning to the Middle Ages.^84
Justinian was a strong emperor who initiated a series of extraordinarily
ambitious policies, and carried most of them through in the face of great
obstacles. But it is doubtful whether even without these obstacles the eastern
empire would have been suffi ciently strong in economic and administrative
terms to sustain the extra burdens it was taking on.^85 And at the same time
processes of social change were taking place throughout the Mediterranean
world of which contemporaries were barely aware, yet which were condition-
ing the outcome of the very policies which they adopted.