Alex’s Reviews > Imperial Tragedy: From Constantine’s Empire to the Destruction of Roman Italy AD 363-568 > Status Update

"We are told that Justinian was already preparing to flee when Theodora stiffened his spine: ‘The purple makes a fine winding sheet,’ she is reported to have said. But, be that as it may, the emperor now decided to fight."

"If we are to believe the narrative of Procopius’ Anecdota (the ‘Secret History’ he wrote to record the dark side of the emperor he praised so lavishly in his public works), Theodora became a celebrity on account of her sexual appetites and her willingness to indulge specialist tastes."

"At times, one can almost sense the royal frustration: Burgundian indifference to the sanctity of sworn testimony under Roman law forced Gundobad to permit the old customary practice of trial by battle. By these sorts of small steps, the world and the worldview of antiquity slowly disappeared."

"Late in his [Oroacers] reign, however, he launched a war of conquest against the Rugian king Feletheus in Noricum, destroying a petty kingdom that had existed north of the Alps for about thirty years, during which we know very little about it save that it was there."