Still, after making all deductions, it is plain that the man who accomplished so much, and kept the whole world so occupied, as Justinian did during the thirty-eight years of his reign, must have possessed no common abilities. He was affable and easy of approach to all his subjects, with a pleasant address; nor does he seem to have been, like his wife, either cruel or revengeful. We hear several times of his sparing those who had conspired against him. But he was not scrupulous in the means he employed, and he was willing to maintain in power detestable ministers if only they served him efficiently and filled his coffers. His chief passion, after that for his own fame and glory, seems to have been for theology ; it was in this field that his literary powers exerted them selves, and his taste also, for among his numerous buildings the churches are those on which he spent most thought and money. Considering that his legal reforms are those by which his name is mainly known to posterity, it is curious that we should have hardly any information as to his legal knowledge, or the share which he took in those reforms.
In person he was somewhat above the middle height, well shaped, with plenty of fresh colour in his cheeks, and an extraor dinary power of doing without food and sleep. Two mosaic fig
ures of him exist at Ravenna, one in the apse of the church of S. Vitale, the other in the church of S. Apollinare in Urbe; but of course one cannot be sure how far in such a material the portrait fairly represents the original. He had no children by his marriage with Theodora, and did not marry after her decease. On his death, on Nov. 14, 565, the crown passed to his nephew Justin II.
the life of Justinian the chief authorities are Procopius (Historiae, De aedificiis, Anecdota) and (from A.D. 552) the History of Agathias ; the Chronicle of Johannes Malalas is also of value. Occasional reference must be made to the writings of Tordanes and Marcellinus, and even to the late compilation of Cedrenus.
See also Gibbon (ed. Bury 1923) ; Bury, Later Roman Empire, vol. ii.; Grupe, Kaiser Justinian (Leipzig 1923). The best general account of Justinian's reign in all its aspects is probably Diehl, Justinian et la civilisation byzantine (IgoI). (J. BRY. ; X.)