The Byzantine Empire: A Short History

Justinian and the People Around Him

Now in 518 a man named Justin took the throne of the Byzantines. He himself isn't very notable other than he grew up a peasant and became Emperor by joining the Army and eventually becoming commander of the palace guard. What is more notable though was his nephew Peter Sabbitus who he eventually adopted, and had educated. This Peter Sabbitus changed his name in honor of his uncle to Justinian. Now Justinian has probably had one of the biggest impacts on society from that point on. First he is known for his "dream team" of advisors and councilors including such people as Belisarius, Theodora (his wife), and John the Cappadocian. With all this talent he was able to help restore the Byzantines after some of the conflict and disasters that had recently stricken. Such as the horrible failure that was the attempted invasion of North Africa by Basiliscus in 468 which left the Empire drained of funds and manpower (the 100,000+ man invasion force was decimated in the literal sense) from which it had yet to fully recover. Justinian was able to take the Empire out of this slump, though he had his own troubles such as the Nika Riots and how the people disliked the man he had in charge of collecting taxes, John the Cappadocian. Though even with that, he and his advisors were able to do what Basiliscus had failed to do, invade North Africa. Doing this they also recovered much of the loot that was taken by the Vandals from Rome when they had sacked the city years earlier (410, 455). After this great success they would also eventually go on to take back Rome and much of Italy. They also were able to beat the Persians during this time. Though not fully annexing the country as they didn't have the resources they did force them to say they wouldn't attack ever again. Though the so called "Eternal Peace" was not eternal as they went back to fighting after eight years.

Now Justinian as I said did more than just win some wars, he also formalized and organized all the laws of the Empire into what we now know as the Justinian Code. With this they had to go through all the compilations of laws and legal documents from the republic days to their current year and find a way to record it all in one comprehensive set of text, doing this was a blessing to what were the equivalent of lawyers at the time as they now could all have access to the same rule set because before this you needed to go back and try to find out what the laws said and you needed to figure out what to do whenever you found contradictions in rulings. This code is still the basis for much of Western European law. Napoleon took much of it and added it to the set of laws he wanted Europe to follow, now known as Napoleon's Code.

Justinian also during his time made enemies with the Patrician class as he had started to actually tax them. Though them becoming such enemies with him turned out to be a double edged sword as it turned out that the Patricians were involved in the Nika Riots, which almost ended his reign, (one of the demands from the protestors and rioters was to get rid of John the Cappadocian, and seeing how he had been recently taxing the rich more and more it made sense that the Patrician were behind this as the protestors were mostly lower class and their taxes would have been the same as it had been for decades) after the Nika Riots he gave John much more power than he had previously to start to tax the rich more than he was. When this happened many of the rich just decided to flee Constantinople and try to save their money.

One of the key figures during the Nika Riots was Justinian's wife, Theodora. Theodora had grown up a commoner and an actress. This was a problem at first when Justinian and she wanted to marry as at the time it was illegal to marry a commoner if you were a relative of the emperor but after asking his uncle, Justin, that law was scrapped and they were then able to marry. Theodora had not really done very much until the Nika Riots, years after their marriage. Though what she did is probably what saved the Empire in the long run, as before she interfered with the council that was with Justinian the current plan was for Justinian and his supporters to board some boats and leave the city.

Thankfully for Justinian, Theodora disapproved of the plan saying in effect that it was better to go out trying to defend the city and their royalty "As to the belief that a woman ought not to be daring among men or to assert herself boldly among those who are holding back from fear, I consider that the present crisis most certainly does not permit us to discuss whether the matter should be regarded in this or in some other way.", "May I never be separated from this purple" and"I approve a certain ancient saying that royalty is a good burial-shroud" (sometimes translated to the more popular, "purple is the noblest shroud"). After her speech Justinian and his council decided to stay and they were able to round up forces in the city and by pure luck Belisarius was the one to take the reigns as at this time he really wasn't known to Justinian but he happened to by the highest ranking officer in Constantinople and it was because of Belisarius's effectiveness with dealing with the riots he was given command of the campaigns previously mentioned against the Persians, Vandals and the yet to be mentioned campaign against the Ostrogoths. So Theodora didn't just potentially save the Empire from collapse but also inadvertently brought forth one of the best generals before the advent of firearms. Aside from this crisis Theodora was vital in the Empire through the rest of her reign as she became one of the most influential people in the Empire as Justinian's policy was drastically affected by the opinions of Theodora. During the time Theodora had as Empress she was able to pass many new laws that added protections for women such as more property rights