Identifying Dissident Circles in Sixth-Century Byzantium: The Friendship of Prokopios and loannes Lydos

Prokopios’ Wars, released to the public in 551, was an instant success. When Prokopios published a supplement two years later he noted that his work had appeared in every part of the Roman empire. The popularity of the work was in every way to be expected. Thoughtful men who had experienced the eventful reign of Justinian would respond with enthusiasm to a book as superb as the Wars. After all, Prokopios, who had traveled to Africa, Italy, and the east with Belisarios, had witnessed many of the events he described and had access to the court and contacts throughout the known world. His prose was concise and elegant and always reflected the humanity and cultural discretion of what he himself called a "liberal education," έλευθέριοι λόγοι και παιδεία (e.g., in 1.24.12). It was inevitable that he would be admired and imitated by his successors, such as Agathias, Menandros, Evagrios, and the last historian of antiquity, Theophylaktos. Later Byzantine accounts of the sixth century, e.g., the chronicle of Theophanes, consisted in large part of excerpts from the Wars. It is no accident that modern surveys still rely heavily on that work.