Introduction

In scholarship on the late Roman empire generally, the sixth century is more or less equated to the reign of Justinian (527–565). One reason for this is the legacy of Prokopios’s texts, and the archaeological survival of building works that can be correlated with what is found in the Wars , the Secret History – and above all, the Buildings. Prokopios’s choice to dedicate an entire panegyric to the building works of a ruler to promote his fame as a builder (Proc.Aed. 1.1.17) is without precedent. The current scholarly trend is towards a critical view of Justinian as a ruler (most prominently in Kaldellis 2004 ; Bell 2013 ; Athanassiadi 2010 ), but, as one would expect of cultural output in an imperial context, much of the literary production presented an idealised picture of his reign. The Buildings heightens this effect, although, it is a complex, subtle, literary work that offers different levels of reading, not all of which are complimentary – the Buildings is just as much about Prokopios as an author as it is about Justinian as a builder. Although the treatise claims foremost to praise the building achievements of Justinian, its author pursues a broader agenda: the presentation of military might as well as the propagation of cultural (civic) values and the Christian faith. Prokopios conveys the impression that Justinian was responsible for security on the frontiers, safe travel and the advance of orthodoxy throughout the empire and – directly or indirectly – the spectacular beauty of Constantinople. From a literary viewpoint, the Buildings has not garnered much attention despite its creativity and uniqueness. It is a self-professed ambitious work which plays with the reader’s expectations, mixes from a myriad of literary genres, reverses the hierarchy of narrative and descriptive and plays with the idea of the catalogue by varying scale. The restriction to a unique topic, buildings, instead of being a limitation, becomes an engine for variety and experimentation.