PROCOPIUS, Byzantine historian, was born at Caesarea in Palestine towards the end of the 5th century A.D. He became a lawyer, probably at Constantinople, and was in 527 appointed private secretary to Belisarius, whom he accompanied on his Per sian, African and Italian campaigns. After the capture of Ra venna in 540 Procopius seems to have returned to Constantinople, since he minutely describes the great plague of 542 (op. cit. ii. 22). It does not appear whether he was with the Roman armies in the later stages of the Gothic War, when Belisarius and after wards Narses fought against Totila in Italy ; his narrative of these years is much less full and minute than that of the earlier war fare. Of his subsequent fortunes we know nothing, except that he was living in 559. Whether he was the Procopius who was prefect of Constantinople in 562 (Theophanes, Chronographia, 201, 202), and was removed from office in the year following, cannot be determined, though it is not improbable.
Procopius's writings fall into three divisions: the Histories (Persian, Vandal and Gothic Wars), in eight books; the treatise on the Buildings of Justinian (De aedificiis), in six books; and the Unpublished Memoirs (' AviKoora, Historia arcana) , so called because they were not published during the lifetime of the author.
The Histories are called by the author himself the Books about the Wars (ol intip roXii2cov Xb'yoc). They consist of : (I) the Persian Wars, in two books, giving a narrative of the long struggle of the emperors Justin and Justinian against the Persian kings Kavadh and Chosroes Anushirvan down to 55o; (2) the Vandal War, in two books, describing the conquest of tjie Vandal kingdom in Africa and the subsequent events there from 532 down to 546 (with a few words on later occurrences) ; (3) the Gothic War, in three books, narrating the war against the Ostro goths in Sicily and Italy from 536 till 552. The eighth book con tains a further summary of events down to 554. These eight books contain notices of some of the more important domestic events, such as the Nika insurrection at Constantinople in 532, and the plague in 542. They tell us, however, comparatively little about the civil administration of the empire, and nothing about legislation.
The De aedificiis contains an account of the chief public works executed during the reign of Justinian down to 56o which are of course ascribed to the personal action of the monarch. If not written at the command of Justinian (as some have supposed), it is evidently grounded on official information, and is full of gross flattery of the emperor and of the (then deceased) empress. In point of style it is greatly inferior to the Histories—florid, pom pous and affected, and at the same time tedious Its chief value lies in the geographical notices which it contains.
The Anecdota (date probably 55o) purports to be a supplement to the Histories, containing explanations and additions which the author could not insert in the latter work for fear of Justinian and Theodora. It is a furious invective against these sovereigns, with attacks on Belisarius and his wife Antonina, and on other noted officials. Owing to the ferocity and brutality of the attacks upon Justinian, the authenticity of the Anecdota has often been called in question, but the claims of Procopius to the authorship are now generally recognized. In point of style, the Anecdota is in ferior to the Histories, and has the air of being unfinished, or at least unrevised. The history of Philip of Macedon by Theo pompus probably furnished the author with a model.
The best complete edition of Procopius is by J. Haury (Teubner Series, 1905-13). There are English translations of the History of the Wars, by H. Holcroft (1653), of the Anecdota (1674, anonymous), of the Builliings, by Aubrey Stewart (Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, i888) and by H. B. Dewing (Loeb Classical Library, 1914, etc.). Chief authorities: F. Dahn, Procopius von Cdsarea (1865); J. Haury. Procopiana (i891-93). On the genuineness of the Anecdote, see J. B. Bury (who agrees with Ranke in rejecting the authorship of Pro copius), A History of the Later Roman Empire (1889), vol. i. and introd. to vol. ii. (p. 57) and appendix to vol. iv. of his edition of E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall (5925). See also C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur (2nd ed., 1897).