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Table of Contents

  1. Titlepage
  2. Imprint
  3. Introduction
  4. Foreword by the Historian
  5. The Secret History
    1. I: How the Great General Belisarius Was Hoodwinked by His Wife, Whose Lover Became a Monk
    2. II: How Belated Jealousy Affected Belisarius’s Military Judgment, to the Joy of the Enemy
    3. III: Showing the Danger of Interfering with a Woman’s Intrigues, Especially When the Woman Is the Friend of an Empress
    4. IV: How Theodora, Revenging Her Dear Antonina, Humiliated the Conqueror of Africa and Italy
    5. V: How Theodora Tricked the General’s Daughter Into a Liaison with the Empress’s Nephew, and Belisarius Became a Public Laughing Stock
    6. VI: Ignorance of the Emperor Justin, and His Stencilled Signature, and How His Nephew Justinian Was the Virtual Ruler
    7. VII: Outrages of the Blues
    8. VIII: Character and Appearance of Justinian
    9. IX: And How Theodora, Most Depraved of All Courtesans, Won His Love
    10. X: How Justinian Created a New Law Permitting Him to Marry a Courtesan on Her Promise to Repent Her Past; and the Truth About the Apparent Quarrels of a Happy Pair
    11. XI: How the Defender of the Faith Ruined His Subjects
    12. XII: Proving That Justinian and Theodora Were Actually Fiends in Human Form
    13. XIII: Deceptive Affability and Piety of a Tyrant
    14. XIV: Justice for Sale
    15. XV: How an Roman Citizens Became Slaves, and a Complaining Patrician Was Ribaldly Mocked by Theodora’s Eunuchs
    16. XVI: What Happened to Those Who Fell Out of Favor with Theodora
    17. XVII: How She Saved Five Hundred Harlots from a Life of Sin, Made Away with Her Own Natural Son, and Other Curious Incidents of Her Passion for Match Making
    18. XVIII: How Justinian Killed a Trillion People
    19. XIX: How He Seized All the Wealth of the Romans and Threw It Away in the Sea and on the Barbarians
    20. XX: Debasing of the Quaestorship
    21. XXI: The Sky Tax, the Selling of All Offices, and How Border Armies Were Forbidden to Punish Invading Barbarians
    22. XXII: Further Corruption in High Places
    23. XXIII: How Landowners Were Ruined
    24. XXIV: Unjust Treatment of the Soldiers, and How Justinian Tricked the “Students” Out of Their Pay by Threatening to Send Them to War
    25. XXV: How He Robbed His Own Officials, Merchants, Sailors, Workmen, and Everybody Else
    26. XXVI: How He Spoiled the Beauty of the Cities and Plundered the Poor
    27. XXVII: How the Defender of the Faith Protected the Interests of the Christians
    28. XXVIII: His Violation of the Laws of the Romans, and How Jews Were Fined for Eating Lamb
    29. XXIX: Other Incidents Revealing Him as a Liar and a Hypocrite
    30. XXX: Further Innovations of Justinian and Theodora, and a Conclusion Which Imagines the Death of an Emperor
  6. Endnotes
  7. Colophon
  8. Uncopyright

Landmarks

  1. The Secret History
  2. Endnotes