PROCO'PIIIS, an eminent Byzantine historian, was born at Cresarea, in Palestine, about the beginning of the 6th c., went to Constantinople when still a young man, and acquired there so high a reputation as a prof. of rhetoric, that Belisarius, in 527, appointed him his private secretary. Procopius accompanied the great warrior in all his important. campaigns in Asia, Africa, and Italy, and appears to have displayed remarkable practi cal as well as literary talent, for we find him placed at the head both of the commissariat department and of the Byzantine navy. He returned to Constantinople shortly before. 542, was highly honored by Justinian, and appointed prefect of the metropolis in 562. His death occurred, it is thought, about three years later. Procopius's principal works. are his Historice, in 8 books (two on the Persian war, from 408 to 553; two on the war with the Vandals, from 395 to 545; four on the Gothic war, going down to 553); Etis -mato, or six books on the buildings executed or restored by Justinian; and Anekdota, orHistoric Arcana (of doubtful genuineness), a sort of chronigue scandaleuse of the court of Justinian, in which the emperor, his wife Theodora, Belisarius, his wife Antonina, and other distinguished persons, are depicted in the darkest colors. The most valuable of
these productions is undoubtedly the first, in which Procopius writes with the clearness, weight, and fullness of knowledge that might be expected of a man who had been an eye-witness of much of what he narrates, and who had occupied a position that fitted him to thoroughly understand what he had seen. He is the principal authority for the reign of Justinian. His style is pure, vigorous, and flexible. The best edition of his complete works is that by Dindorf (3 vols. Bonn, 1833 39).