Christianity and Paganism in Procopius of Caesarea Evans, J A S Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Spring 1971; 12, 1; ProQuest pg. 81

Christianity and Paganism in 
Procopius of Caesarea 

J. A. S. Evans 

I 

THERE IS an apparent ambiguity about Procopius of Caesarea's 
attitude towards the Christian faith which, ever since Edward 
Gibbon, has led modern historians into conjectures about his 

personal beliefs.1 Brought up on history books which relate the theo­
logical disputes of the late Empire among Arians, Nestorians, Mono­
physites and their variants, we are hardly prepared to find a contem­
porary of Justinian state that he thinks it absurd to want to know the 
nature of God. Yet Procopius does say this (De Bellis 5.3.5-9), even with 
a touch of disdain. HThe words imply," remarked J. B. Bury, Han 
oblique hit at the Emperor who in the Secret History is described as 
gratuitously busy about the nature of God."2 Of course, it is virtually 
necessary to believe that Procopius maintained a successful fa<;ade of 
orthodoxy. He was appointed assessor to Belisarius in 527, the year of 
justinian's first law against pagans, heretics, Jews and Samaritans, 
which forbade them to hold public office.3 Procopius' record must 
have been clear. Yet a long series of distinguished historians have 
suspected, first, that his orthodoxy was only skin-deep and at heart he 
was a skeptic on matters of Christian faith, and second, that his history 
was cast within an intellectual framework which belonged to the 
classical, pagan past, and owed nothing to the Christian thought­
world. 

For Edward Gibbon,4 Procopius betrayed "occasional conformity, 

1 An earlier version of this essay was presented at the Mid-west meeting of ancient his­
torians held at the University of Buffalo in the Spring of 1970. It has profited from the dis­
cussion which followed its presentation there, particularly from the remarks of the com­
mentator, Mrs Averil Cameron. 

II J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire! II (London 1923) 427f. 
3 Cod.lust. 1.5.12. 

'Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed.]. B. Bury, IV (London 
1901) 210 n.12. 

6-G.R.B.S. 81 



82 CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM IN PROCOPIUS OF CAESAREA 

with a secret attachment to Paganism and Philosophy," and the best 
of Gibbon's editors, J. B. Bury, called him "at core, in the essence of 
his spirit, a pagan."5 Others have labelled him variously a theist, a 
deist, or an agnostic with a fatalist outlook, attached to the philosophy 
of Pyrrho, or, to give modern examples, Spencer and Huxley.6 Even 
Glanville Downey, in an important article published twenty years 
ago,7 where he disagreed with the conventional opinion up to his 
time and pointed out parallels between Procopius' concept of TV)(YI 

and St Augustine's, concludes (p.102), "Procopius may well have been 
a Christian of the independent and skeptical SoOrt, which seems to have 
existed, apparently tolerated, or at least not seriously molested, by 
the orthodox believers." 

The question was reopened in 1966 by A veri! Cameron,s who 
showed not only that the case for Procopius' skepticism was weak, but 
that there was a considerable amount of internal evidence from the 
De Bellis which indicates that he subscribed to the popular Christian 
beliefs of his day. Yet she, too, saw elements of pagan thought and 
Christianity side by side in his works, apparently unreconciled. 
"There is too much of the specifically pagan idea of Fortune in the 
Wars," she noted (p.479), "to allow us to suppose that he had really 
thought out the implications of trying to combine such disparate con­
ceptions as the Fortune explanation and the Providence explanation, 
and, to judge from Procopius' classicism as expressed in the Wars, we 
ought to regard the 'pagan' passages rather than the 'Christian' 
passages cited by Downey as more typical of the impression he wanted 
to give." 

Thus, in place of Downey's picture of Procopius as an independent, 
skeptical Christian influenced by Christian thought, Mrs Cameron 
argued for conventional Christian influenced by pagan thought. The 
following year, an article by the late M. A. Elferink 9 undertook to 
refute Downey entirely and restate the case for the agnostic, fatalist 
Procopius. " ... Agnostique et fataliste," he concluded (p.133), Hil se 

I; J. B. Bury. A History of the Later Roman Empire1 IT (London 1889) 178f. 
6 e.g. F. Dahn, Prokopius von Caesarea (Berlin 1865) 181f, 217 (a mixture of Christian and 

theist, a fatalist); B. Rubin, RE 23 (1957) 331f (skeptic); W. G. Holmes, The Age of Justinian 
and Theodora2 IT (London 1912) 745 (a freethinker). 

7 G. Downey. "Paganism and Christianity in Procopius," Church History 18 (1949) 89-102. 
8 A. Cameron, "The 'Skeptidsm> of Procopius," Historia 15 (1966) 466-82. 
9 Elferink. "TV)(1J et Dieu chez Procope de Cesaree," Acta Classica 10 (1967) 111-34. 



J. A. S. EVANS 83 

contente en general de relever l'insignifiance de la volonte humaine 
dans l'histoire, et de rattacher les faits historiques a une puissance 
superieure, qui peut etre indifferemment Dieu ou la TVX7J." 

Yet we cannot read the Historia Arcana without feeling that, if Pro­
copius was a skeptic, he was not an altogether gentle one. Could the 
visceral hatred on display in the Historia Arcana be odium theologicum? 
Harold Nicolson10 called him a "Jew from Caesarea." Berthold 
Rubinll thought he might be a Jew, but preferred to make him a 
Syrian. He could, apparently, read Syriac. Another scholar made him 
a Samaritan who pretended to profess Christianity.12 There were a 
good number of Samaritans in Caesarea who went through the for­
mality of adopting Christianity to escape the legal penalties which 
Justinian prescribed for Samaritanism. Procopius seems to have 
thought they were sensible fellows, but this is fragile evidence for 
making him into a Samaritan himself. Could he have been a here­
tic 713 The possibility may deserve some attention. He claims to know 
all about contemporary theological disputes, and in the last book of 
the Gothic War (Bell. 8.25.13), he announces his intention of writing a 
treatise on the "matters over which the Christians fight among them­
selves." As far as we know, he never did. But we must allow Pro­
copius a more than passing interest in Christian theology. 

There are two questions which I shall examine in this essay. The 
first is, what was Procopius' theological position 7 In other words, can 
we conjecture what might have been his stance in his unwritten work 
on Christian heresies 7 The second is a related question. What role did 
TVX7J play in Procopius' conception of historical causation, and was it a 
specifically pagan one in the context of his own thought-world 7 

First, a matter of procedure. Part of the ambiguity we find in Pro­
copius stems from the literary mask he assumes. He was the greatest 
of the school of 'Profanhistoriker' which started with Ammianus 
Marcellinus, a product of the Greek East although he wrote in Latin, 
and ended with Theophylact Simocatta.14 It was a school which car­
ried on many of the traditions and literary idiosyncrasies of the 

10 Sir H. G. Nicolson, Monarchy (London 1962) 109. 
11 Rubin, "Das Ri:imische Reich im Osten, Byzanz," Propyllien Weltgeschichte IV: Rom, Die 

romische Welt (Berlin/Frankfurt/Vienna 1963) 641. 
12 R. Atwater, The Secret History of Pro cop ius (New York 1927) 1. 

13 Cf P. Bonfante, "II movente della Storia Arcana di Procopio," RendLinc 1932, 381-85. 
14 On their characteristics, see Averil and Alan Cameron, "Christianity and Tradition in 

the Historiography of the Late Empire," CQ 14 (1964) 316-28. 



84 CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM IN PROCOPIUS OF CAESAREA 

<Greek Renascence', the period which runs from Dionysius of Hali­
carnassus and Diodorus to Aelian and philostratus. The great exem­
plars were Herodotus and Thucydides, modified somewhat by the 
conventions of the Second Sophistic, and Procopius wrote consciously 
in language which might be understood by citizens of Periclean 
Athens. Now, one of the problems of wearing a literary mask which 
was a thousand years old, was that there were in Justinian's Con­
stantinople institutions of which fifth-century Greece was quite ig­
norant-most of the imperial bureaucracy, for one thing. Hence 
Herodotus and Thucydides had no words for such outlandish officials 
as the a secretis (Rist.Arc. 14.4) or the referendarii (Rist.Arc. 14.11). They 
had never heard of a Roman legion, which was a very elderly institu­
tion in the sixth century. Hence Procopius must introduce words un­
familiar to a fifth-century Athenian; but when he does, it is with an 
apologetic "so-called" to qualify them, or some explanation to make 
their meaning clear. In so doing, he was following a tradition which 
can be traced as far back as Herodian.15 But we must not think Pro­
copius was detached from the imperial bureaucracy because of the 
somewhat distant manner with which he introduces officials. On the 
contrary, he was a bureaucrat himself. His apologies for contemporary 
terms were simply an attempt to reconcile his style with the exigen­
cies of writing a history of his own times. 

Yet what are we to make of a writer of the sixth century who is 
reluctant to sully his literary purity by calling a church a church 
(J.KKA'T]cta) or a bishop a bishop (J.TTtCKOTTOC), but instead uses circumlo­
cutions such as Ha shrine ... which they call an J.KKA.'T]cta" (Bell. 2.9.14) 

or "one of the priests whom they call <bishops'" (Bell. 3.1O.18)? 
What this manner of speaking means is only that churches and 
bishops were non-classical. Procopius' classical mask is purely literary. 
Its traditions were derived from a pagan world; but like many other 
pagan traditions, they were quite capable of being denatured and re­
used by Christians. We can infer nothing about Procopius' personal 
beliefs from his mask. Nor, I think, can we make anything of the fact 
that in the De Aedificiis, Procopius appears somewhat more willing to 
employ contemporary terminology for churches and monasteries. In 
the first place, that work is unfinished, and sections of it sound like the 

16 Cf. Herodian 5.4.8 (the Greek and Latin terms for 'praetorian guard'); 1.9.2. (an ex­
planation of the !udi Capito!ini). 



J. A. S. BV ANS 85 

raw material for a panegyric rather than the finished product. In the 
second, Justinian's building programme included great numbers of 
churches and monasteries, and it would have been intolerably clumsy 
to describe them all without naming them except by circumlocutions. 
Yet, in spite of the difficulties, even in the De Aedificiis, Procopius does 
not lay aside his classical mask. He uses it as well as his subject allows 
him. 

We are dealing here with the problem of sincerity in literature, and 
for our study it is an important one. For not only does Procopius ex­
press conventional embarrassment when he must use non-classical 
words, but he borrows phrases and topoi from his classical models. 
When he writes that it was necessary for Antioch to fall to the Per­
sians in 540 (Ka~ yap E8EL 'AvTLox€ac rOllTcp rip M~8wv crparip U:1To/..€c(}aL, 
Bell. 2.8.14) or that it was not fated that Sergiopolis be captured (Kat 
E7TEL OUK E8EL EEPYLOV7TOAw IUpcaLc aAwvaL, Bell. 2.20.10), to take only 
two examples, he uses language which Herodotus might have used. 
But is this evidence that Procopius viewed the workings of history in 
the same way that Herodotus did? It would be dangerous to leap to 
any such conclusion. A Christian with a teleological view of history, 
such as Evagrius, could have agreed that Antioch was fated to fall and 
that Sergiopolis was not.16 Nor need the language which the Christian 
used to express this view have differed from that of Procopius if he 
chose to write secular rather than ecclesiastical history, and his choice 
would depend on his subject matter rather than his personal convic­
tions. The domain of secular history was the world of politics and 
affairs; ecclesiastical history dealt with the church in the world. 

On the other hand, it is sometimes profitable to compare a topos 
borrowed from Herodotus or Thucydides with its prototype. The 
passage in the Vandalic War (Bell. 3.lO.1-21) where Justinian an­
nounces his expedition against North Africa is modelled, though with­
out elaboration, after the scene in Herodotus (7.8-13) where Xerxes 
announces his expedition to Greece. The man who plays the role of 
Artabanus is John the Cappadocian, and John's arguments against 
Justinian's offensive parallel those of Artabanus, with one significant 
difference. Artabanus expatiated to Xerxes on the jealousy of God, 
who loved to bring the lofty low. John says merely that the vicissi­
tudes of war lie on the knees of God. Procopius was capable of refer-

16 Cf. Euagr. Hist.Eccl. 5.11. 



86 CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM IN PROCOPIUS OF CAESAREA 

ring elsewhere to the "jealousy of Fortune"!7 but he does not allow 
John to attribute jealousy to God. In the sixth century jealousy of this 
sort was regularly ascribed to the Devil. What Procopius suggests, in­
stead, is that warfare is subject to chance, and that chance in turn is, 
somehow, the lapdog of God. I think this avoidance is significant. We 
find it is often the case that a comparison of a tapas in Procopius with 
its Herodotean or Thucydidean prototype brings out the difference 
in Procopius' outlook. 

II 
I propose now to examine Procopius' theological position. Was he a 

skeptic, a heretic or a Christian of some sort or other? The problem 
with labelling Procopius a skeptic is that, if we examine the evidence 
of the De Bellis and the Historia Arcana, it is hard to discover what he is 
skeptical about that a good Christian should believe. Admittedly he 
did express doubts about the Sibylline oracles (Bell. 5.24.34-37), which 
he claimed to have examined in Rome, but these were pagan. It is 
hard to discover any trace of disbelief in matters touching Christian 
faith. He evidently accepted miracles which involved Christianity. 
One entertaining anecdote in the Persian War (Bell. 1.7.5-11) tells how 
a band of White Huns came upon a hermit in Syria, Jacob by name, 
who devoted his life to prayer and contemplation. The Huns raised 
their bows to shoot the holy man, but as they did so, their hands be­
came paralysed, and they could do nothing. Cabades, king of Persia, 
came to see what had happened, and on learning the truth, begged 
Jacob to forgive the Huns. He did so, and the paralysis left them. I can 
find no trace of skepticism here. 

Let us take another example, from the account of the great siege of 
Rome by Wittigis in the Gothic War (Bell. 5.23.4-7). Part of the city wall 
had split open, and Belisarius was about to repair it. But the Romans 
told him that the apostle Peter had promised to guard this section of 
the wall, and so Belisarius let it be, quite safely, as it turned out. "We 
wondered," remarked Procopius, "that this part of the wall did not 
come to our mind, or to that of the enemy, during the whole time (of 
the siege)." No skepticism about St Peter's powers here. 

He apparently believed in omens. A comet appeared in A.D. 539 and 
was duly described by Procopius (Bell. 2.4.1-3). Wise men disagreed 

17 Bell. 6.S.1; cf. Cameron, op.cit. (supra n.S) 471. 



J. A. S. BV ANS 87 

about what this phenomenon meant, if anything, and Procopius de­
clined to take sides. He states merely that he would put down what 
happened next and let everyone judge as he wished from the out­
come of events. Herodotus might have done likewise. 

But what happened next was, first, that a horde of Huns crossed the 
Danube and pillaged as far south as Therrnopylae, and shortly there­
after, the Persians launched an offensive which culminated in the sack 
of Antioch. Procopius' presentation of the evidence would not en­
courage us to think that he was skeptical about omens. 

The De Aedificiis is not a good witness for Procopius' private beliefs 
since it was evidently a work commissioned by Justinian. But we may 
take it as evidence of those attitudes he saw fit to assume publicly. 
We would not expect to find skepticism in this panegyric, and as I 
have argued elsewhere,18 Procopius here appears to accept fully the 
conventional Byzantine view of the empire as an imitation of Heaven, 
with the emperor the vicegerent of God and the friend of the Logos­
a concept which he reversed in the Historia Arcana. Yet in the De 
Aedificiis (1.1.68-71) we do find one example of Hskepticism" used for 
a purely artistic motive. When the architects of Hagia Sophia were at 
a loss what to do at one crisis during the construction, they turned to 
Justinian, who solved their engineering problem for them. Procopius 
claimed not to know whence the emperor got his expert knowledge, 
though he supposed it came from God. I think that none of his con­
temporaries was unaware of what the source of a Byzantine emperor's 
wisdom was supposed to be, and Justinian himself would scarcely 
have tolerated sincere doubt in a commissioned panegyric. But he 
could accept literary convention. 

In the Historia Arcana, if anywhere, we should expect to find evi­
dence of disbelief, and yet it too fails to yield anything of importance. 
On the contrary, the secret historian adopted a moral tone. He be­
rated his victims when they broke their promises, and professed to 
find their private lives offensive to a good Christian. He would not 
name Theodora's profession before she married because God would 
not be merciful to a man who uttered such a name (9.28). In the His­
toria Arcana Procopius is closest to the doctrine openly professed by 
his continuator, Agathias, that punishment from God inevitably fol-

18 Evans, "Procopius of Caesarea and the Emperor Justinian," in Canadian Historical 
Assn. Historical Papers 1968, pp.126-39. 



88 CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM IN PROCOPIUS OF CAESAREA 

lows sin.19 When Belisarius was sent against the Persians in 542, he was 
"guilty of cowardice" (3.30). The reason was that he had broken his 
word to his stepson Photius and thereafter found God hostile, Has one 
would expect." Solomon, Belisarius' successor as commander in 
Africa, suffered punishment from God for the murder of Pegasius 
(5.34-38). In addition, the Historia Arcana reveals a Procopius who be­
lieved in demonology. He condemned witchcraft and sorcery, but ac­
cepted their power; he even speculated that Antonina and Theodora 
practised witchcraft on their husbands (1.26, 22.26-27). 

In imitation of Herodotus, Procopius was fond of relating a story 
and then adding that he could not vouch for its accuracy. This skep­
ticism is part of his classical mask; but even so we should note that if 
it touches matters of Christian faith, it does so with circumspection. 
Procopius relates the story of how Abgar, top arch of Edessa, received 
a letter from Christ; this is his only reference to Christ on earth, and 
it has already been noted that he terms him the "Son of God" here 
without a trace of personal disbelief.20 This letter kept Edessa safe 
from capture. Procopius concluded his story of how it came to Edessa 
as follows: 

And the thought once occurred to me that, if the Christ did not 
write this thing just as I have told it, still, since men have come to be­
lieve in it, He wishes to guard the city uncaptured for this reason, 
that He may never give them any pretext for error. As for these 
things, then, let them be as God wills, and so let them be told.21 

This is a conventional Herodotean conclusion. But the suspension of 
belief is very literary, and gentle. Procopius does not necessarily be­
lieve in the authenticity of all relics, but he does think that they fulfill 
a function prescribed for them by God. If this is skepticism, it is a 
variety hardly repugnant to Christianity. 

Two further passages should be examined, for they have assumed 
some importance in the argument about Procopius' beliefs. One is his 
outburst over the fall of Antioch in 540 (Bell. 2.10.4-5). 

But I become dizzy as I write of such a great calamity and transmit 
it to future times, and I am unable to understand why indeed it 

11 Cf. A. Cameron, Agathias (Oxford 1970) 94. 
10 Cf. A. Cameron, transl. Procopius. History of the Wars, Secret History, and Buildings (New 

York 1967) xxii. 
11 Bell. 2.12.30, LCL trans!' of H. B. Dewing. 



J. A. S. BV ANS 

should be the will of God to exalt on high the fortunes of a man or of 
a place, and then to cast them down and destroy them for no cause 
which appears to us. For it is wrong to say that with Him all things 
are not always done with reason, though He then endured to see 
Antioch brought down to the ground at the hands of a most unholy 
man ..• 

89 

This passage has been taken by Rubin 22 as evidence of Procopius' 
pessimistic resignation, and by Mrs Cameron as a sign of piety.23 I 
should agree in general with Mrs Cameron's arguments, but I would 
add that this passage is also a bitter, bewildered outburst over the 
senseless destruction of a city which Procopius knew and no doubt 
loved. Moreover, when he writes a:v'Tcp yap ou {NfLLC €l7T€'iV fL~ OUXL 
a7TCXV'TCX KCX'Td. '\oyov ad ylyv€c8cxL, he is stating his credo: there must be 
a ,\oyoc or divine reason attached to the actions of God, although here 
he cannot discover what it is. I do not think it too much to say that 
this is the '\oyoc with which a true Byzantine emperor was supposed to 
have a special relationship. The emperor was supposed to be the 
friend of the AOyoC. Procopius was not expressing resignation to fate, 
and he was being more than conventionally pious. He meant that the 
sack of Antioch by an enemy of the Christian faith, which the Persian 
king was, did not seem to fit with the doctrine that God's actions ac­
cord with the '\oyoc, a view he accepted fully, and hence he was at a 
loss for an explanation. 

The second passage is taken by Elferink 24 as evidence of Procopius' 
agnosticism and fatalism. It is his comment on Belisarius' failure in his 
second campaign in Italy (Bell. 7.13.15, LCL transI.): 

And to me it seemed either that Belisarius had chosen the worse 
course because it was fated at that time that the Romans should fare 
ill, or that he had indeed determined upon the better course, but 
God, having in mind to assist Totila and the Goths, had stood as an 
obstacle in his way, so that the best of the plans of Belisarius had 
turned out utterly contrary to his expectations. 

What this passage and its immediate sequel mean, I believe, is that 
either Belisarius used bad strategy because it accorded with the divine 
plan of things that the Goths should be victorious at this point in time, 

22 Rubin, op.cit. (supra n.6) 335. 
23 Cameron, op.cit. (supra n.8) 468. 
24 Elferink, op.cit. (supra n.9) 11~22. 



90 CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM IN PROCOPIUS OF CAESAREA 

or that he used good strategy, which ordinarily should have brought 
victory, but God intervened to see to it that the plan was carried out. 
The question was simply whether or not Belisarius' strategy was 
sound. If it was not, then Belisarius was unwittingly falling in line 
with the divine plan. If it was, then God was preventing its success. 
The question was not without importance for Belisarius' reputation. 
As John the Cappadocian had reminded Justinian, borrowing the 
sentiment from Herodotus, sound planning is a mark of wisdom, for 
even if a man's plans fail, he will have the consolation of knowing he 
planned well (Bell. 3.10.1-21). 

I find support for this view from the fact that Procopius returned to 
the same question in his Historia Arcana (4.42-45). Here he indicates 
that Belisarius' tactics in his second, unsuccessful campaign against the 
Goths were better than in his first, but he had bad luck, and public 
opinion credited him wrongly with strategic errors. Procopius goes 
on to generalize in this passage that the affairs of men are governed 
not by human counsels but by the authority of God, "which men are 
accustomed to call TVxr/." "For the label of TVxr/," wrote Procopius, 
"is wont to be attached to what appears to be senseless." 

Elferink's interpretation of these two passages is different. In the 
first, he argues that there is a clear alternative: either Belisarius' ill 
success was caused by the arbitrary, incomprehensible action of rrJxr/, 
or it was caused by the intervention of God, which was comprehen­
sible, and he claims to find this concept of alternative causation 
throughout Procopius' works. Yet, a strict translation of this passage 
cannot bear such an interpretation. The alternative concerns Beli­
sarius' tactics, which were either good or bad. Procopius appears to 
assume that God was the author of the necessity that the Romans 
should fare ill, no matter how skilfully Belisarius led them. As for the 
passage from the Historia Arcana, Elferink takes it as an isolated com­
ment. 

So much for the agnostic, skeptical Procopius. The evidence sug­
gests that he was a Christian, who accepted the conventional beliefs 
and superstitions of sixth-century Christianity. But was he an ortho­
dox Christian? He never fulfilled his intention of writing a treatise on 
Christian heresies, although in the Historia Arcana (11.33) he appeared 
to repeat the promise. The Historia Arcana, however, does devote a 
section (11.14-33) to what Procopius seemed to regard as a separate 
subject, the "many rejected beliefs of the Christians which they are 



J. A. S. EVANS 91 

accustomed to call <heresies'." Under this heading of "rejected be­
liefs" he listed Montanism, Sabbatianism, Arianism, and Hall others 
by which the opinions of men are wont to wander from the truth." 
Samaritanism and paganism also fell into this category. But there was 
one omission which, unlike the others that Procopius did mention, 
was still a burning question and dangerous to the empire's fabric­
Monophysitism. Apparently Monophysitism was a disputed but not 
a rejected doctrine. 

There is, in this connection, one passage in the De Aedificiis (4.3.12) 
which I find puzzling. Beneath the cool, correct praises in this pane­
gyric, the reader occasionally hears, or thinks he hears, a note of 
irony. At one point Procopius explains that the centaurs of classical 
mythology were the product of a childish belief which the ancients 
held, that there could be one animal with two natures. Is there here 
a distant echo of the creed of Chalcedon ? Of course, Procopius was no 
Monophysite; otherwise he would have been kinder towards the 
memory of Theodora, who enjoyed a certain odour of sanctity in 
Monophysite tradition. Instead, Procopius accused Theodora and 
Justinian of actually causing strife by pretending to take opposing 
theological positions. But if Procopius was no Monophysite, there is 
nothing to show that he was a strict Chalcedonian either. His own 
position, which he expresses briefly in the Gothic War (Bell. 5.3.5-9), is 
that God is completely good and omnipotent and that it is madness 
and folly to try to define his nature. 

This disapproval of Justinian's religious policies which Procopius 
voiced seems to have been based simply on raisons d' hat. The em­
peror, in his determination to impose one single belief on everyone, 
created senseless destruction CRist.Arc. 13.7). Procopius does not appear 
to have disliked Justinian's theology (at one point in the Historia Ar­
cana [13.4] he calls it, with apparent approbation, a "firm belief") so 
much as the consequences of his determination to impose it on others. 
In Palestine Justinian's efforts to enforce orthodoxy drove the Samari­
tans to revolt, and Procopius estimates that 100,000 died in the 
struggle. As a result, the land, "the most fruitful in the whole world" 
(here we have a native speaking), was denuded of its Samaritan farm­
ers, and this had serious consequences for the Christian landholders. 
For they became responsible for the taxes on the abandoned farms, 
even though they derived no income from them (Rist.Arc. 11.29-30). 
Intolerance was clearly bad for business. 



92 CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM IN PROCOPIUS OF CAESAREA 

Yet we should note that, though Procopius disapproved of Jus­
tinian's muscular orthodoxy, the fanatic resistance of the heretics was 
equally senseless in his eyes. He thought the Montanists were un­
reasonable creatures, who shut themselves up in their churches and 
set fire to them rather than accept orthodoxy (Hist.Arc. 11.21-23), and 
he seems to have approved of those urbanized Samaritans in Caesarea 
who went through the pretence of becoming Christians rather than 
suffer persecution (Hist.Arc. 11.25). 

Procopius faulted fanaticism on both sides. This is not to make him 
into a nineteenth-century liberal, and J. B. Bury went too far when he 
suggested that Procopius' projected work on Christian heresies would 
have been "a document of some significance in the literature of tolera­
tion."25 It was rather that Procopius' ideal statesman was a man who 
upheld established usages and subordinated ideology to the practical 
art of maintaining peace and justice within his realm.26 On these 
grounds he faulted Justinian's treatment of the Jews in his Historia 
Arcana. The emperor would not allow them to celebrate the Passover 
when it fell before Easter (28.16-19), and Procopius viewed this as an 
unwarranted breach of custom and hence an innovation, a positive 
evil in the Byzantine world. The De Bellis gives little to indicate what 
Procopius' attitude towards the Jews may have been. The Jews in 
Naples supported the Ostrogoths when Belisarius laid siege to the 
city in 536 (5.8.41), and when the Byzantines took it by storm, they 
met stubborn resistance from a group of Jewish soldiers who guarded 
one section of the wall (5.10.25). To the modern historian, the obvious 
inference is that the Jews preferred Ostrogothic rule because it was 
more tolerant. If Procopius intended his readers to come to this con­
clusion, as he may have done, he was only pointing out subtly the 
military consequences of Justinian's policies towards religious dissi­
dents. There is no good evidence for making Procopius himself a Jew, 
not even one who had come to terms with Christianity. 

Most of this is negative evidence. On the positive side, there are two 
passages worth consideration. The one, to which I have already re­
ferred, is from the Historia Arcana (13.4). Procopius gave somewhat 

26 Bury, op.cit. (supra n.2) 11.428. 
26 Cf Bell. 5.1.26-29, where Procopius characterized Theodoric as in name a tyrant but in 

fact a true {3ac,).£vc. His qualifications for this title were that he observed justice, upheld the 
laws (i.e. was no innovator), protected the realm from its enemies, and acted with wisdom 
and courage. 



J. A. S. EVANS 93 

grudging approval of Justinian's theological posItIon, which is evi­
dence that he was generally orthodox himself. The other is from the 
first book of the Gothic War (Bell. 5.3.7-8, LCL trans1.): 

For man cannot, I think, apprehend even human affairs with accur­
acy, much less those things which pertain to the nature of God. As for 
me, therefore, I shall maintain a discreet silence concerning these 
matters, with the sale object that old and venerable beliefs may not 
be discredited. For I, for my part, will say nothing whatsoever about 
God save that He is altogether good and has all things in His power. 

That is, Procopius accepted an omnipotent God. We might go further 
and suggest that the spirit of the passage has something in common 
with that of the EVWTtKOV promulgated by Zeno, a willingness to com­
promise, which was official policy (in practice, at least) until the ac­
cession of Justin 1.27 But even to go so far involves us in conjecture. 
The best we can say is that the internal evidence from Procopius' 
works would indicate that he was a Christian who shared some of the 
contemporary love of theology, but he cannot be attached securely 
to any faction. 

III 
It is important to keep in mind the evidence for Procopius' Christi­

anity when we come to the second question I want to examine, the 
problem of his historical causation. More than anything else, it has 
been this which has given him the reputation of being a semi-pagan. 
Necessity, God and TVX7J play roles which impinge upon one another. 
At times, TVX7J seems to operate as the servant of necessity, bringing 
about a predestined end. When the Persians were in Petra in Lazica 
(Bell. 2.17.16), the Byzantine commander, John, "by some chance" 
(TVXYJ TtV£) received a mortal wound in the neck, because "it was 
necessary that Chosroes capture Petra." In another example, TVX7J 
brought about an end which God in His mercy had decided upon. 

27 Until the reign of Justin I, pagans and heretics had enjoyed a degree of practical tolera­
tion, and the laws against them which appear in the codes were not strictly enforced; cf 
D. J. Constantelos, "Paganism and the State in the Age of Justinian," Catholic Historical Re­
view 50 (1964-65) 371-80. Hence Justinian's persecutions represented an innovation. Even 
Justinian's persecutions were not all-embracing, however, although they struck a new note 
of harshness. It has been argued recently that the Academy in Athens survived Justinian's 
law of 529 forbidding pagans to teach (cf. Alan Cameron, "The Last Days of the Academy 
in Athens," ProcCambPhilSoc 195, N.S. 15 [1969] 7-29), and other exceptions can be cited also, 
such as the careers of Tribonian and Olympiodorus in Alexandria. 



94 CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM IN PROCOPIUS OF CAESAREA 

The emperor Honorius was terrified when he heard of the usurpation 
of Attalus, Alaric's nominee for the purple. God, however, is wont to 
assist men who are helpless and rather stupid, provided they are not 
wicked, and something of this sort happened for Honorius (Bell. 
3.2.35). Apparently God, being a Christian Himself, was capable of 
being moved by Christian virtues, and TVX7J fell into line with His 
decisions. 

Elsewhere, TVX7J seems to be a capricious force which exalts men at 
one time and brings them low at another for no discernible reason. 
When the Vandal king Gelimer was being besieged by the imperial 
forces on Mt Papua, he asked the Byzantine commander Pharas to 
send him a lyre, a sponge and a loaf of bread. With the lyre he wanted 
to sing an ode which he had composed on his misfortunes. He wanted 
the sponge to bathe his eyes, which had become inflamed, and the 
loaf of bread because he had not seen one since the siege began. When 
pharas heard this, he was deeply moved and lamented the TVX7J of 
mankind-here an apparently irrational force which had exalted 
Gelimer to the throne and then, within a few months, had brought 
him so low as to make such a pitiful request (Bell. 4.6.34). 

A similar thought had occurred to Procopius in the midst of Beli­
sarius' triumphal entry into Carthage, where the Byzantine officers 
had feasted in Gelimer's palace on food prepared the day before for 
Gelimer himself. One could see TVX7J in all its glory showing that 
everything belonged to it, and nothing was in the possession of man 
(Bell. 3.21.7). 

The career of the Gothic king Totila provided another example of 
the caprice of TVX7J. For no reason, it gave him good fortune and then, 
without any proper cause, brought him to an ignominious death after 
his defeat at Busta Gallorum. "But," wrote Procopius (Bell. 8.32. 
30), <'these things have never been comprehensible to man, I think, 
nor will they ever be in the future." TvX7J here is a force beyond 
human understanding, and we may compare this passage with the 
quotation from the Historia Arcana which I have already given (4.43), 
"For the label of TVX7J is wont to be attached to what appears sense­
less." 

TvX7J could delight in coincidence for no particular reason. It ar­
ranged that Belisarius should march into Syracuse on the last day of 
his consulship, 31 December 555, and so he laid down his office there 
instead of at the senate house in Constantinople (Bell. 5.5.18-19). TvX7J 



J. A. S. EVANS 95 

might also show a predilection for symmetrical patterns in history. 
The careers of the two imperial officers, Bessas and Dagisthaeus, pro­
vide examples of this. Bessas lost Rome to Totila and the Goths, but 
later, reassigned to Lazica, he recovered Petra from the Persians. 
Dagisthaeus, who had disgraced himself at Petra and been imprisoned 
for it, was later sent to Italy, and recaptured Rome. Procopius re­
marks (Bell. 8.33.24-25, my transl.): 

At this point in my narrative, I feel like commenting on how TV)(1J 
makes a game of human affairs, not always visiting men in the same 
way, or looking on them with just eyes, but shifting about to fit the 
time and place. She plays a kind of childish sport with them, raising 
and lowering the merits of the poor wretches to fit the time, place or 
circumstance. So Bessas, who had previously lost Rome, not much 
later recovered Petra in Lazica for the Romans, while on the other 
hand Dagisthaeus, who had let Petra slip to the enemy, won back 
Rome in short order for the emperor. But these things have been 
since the beginning, and always will be, as long as the same TVX7J has 
power over men. 

TvX7] plays with men, but for all its freedom, its play still fits "the 
time, place or circumstance." 

The underlying assumption in this passage is that TVX7] operates 
within a scheme of things, and this passage is not alone. When Pro­
copius described the surrender of the Goths in 540, he wrote (Bell. 
6.29.32), "When I saw the entrance of this army into Ravenna, I con­
sidered how actions are not concluded by valour, multitudes or hu­
man virtue; but that some spirit steers the wits and judgements of 
men thither, where nothing can hinder the preordained conclusions." 
The term used for 'spirit' here is not TVX7], but 8aLf.LovLoV. I have already 
cited Procopius' comment on the sack of Antioch (Bell. 2.8.14, 2.10.4-
5), where he declared that God did all things according to reason (KaTa 
Aoyov). In the final book of the De Bellis (8.12.34-35), he even defines 
'TVXTJ as a word which men apply to what seems contrary to reason. 
"So human affairs," he wrote, "are governed not by the power men 
think, but by the authority of God, and this men are accustomed to 
call 'TuXTJ, not knowing for what reason events proceed in the way they 
are disclosed to them. For the label 'TvXTJ loves to attach itself to what 
seems contrary to reason." TvXTJ exalted Totila, king of the Goths, and 
then brought him low, but after the battle of Busta Gallorum, the 
Goths too came to realize that they were fighting against God (Bell. 



96 CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM IN PROCOPIUS OF CAESAREA 

8.35.33). God had, it seems, ordained their defeat from the beginning. 
The passages I have cited, all from the De Bellis, have come from 

Procopius' comments on the operation of Tt5X"1, and they seem to indi­
cate that, while men may think it is capricious, it does not transgress 
a reasonable pattern over which God has ultimate control. In the 
speeches, where Procopius is putting words into the mouths of others, 
Tt5)(11 seems to playa similar role. During the Nika revolt, the senator 
Origines advised the mob not to make war on Justinian, for wars and 
swift decisions fell under the governance of Tt5X"1 (Bell. 2.14.26-31). The 
advice which John the Cappadocian gave to Justinian about the Van­
dal expedition was not dissimilar (Bell. 3.10.8-17). He counseled against 
it, for the outcome of war lay on the knees of God. The assumption 
seems to be the same: that the wise man did not give TllX"1 an opening 
if he could avoid it. 

On the other hand, Totila and Belisarius, both heroic military lead­
ers in the De Bellis, could make speeches to their men in which they 
assumed that the world was ordered on principles of justice and retri­
bution for wrongs committed. Totila explained to his fellow Goths, 
by way of defending his policy of moderation towards the Romans in 
Italy, that TVX"1 was governed according to the life of the individual. 
Thus men who are unjust and violent cannot win glory in battIe (Bell. 
7.8.24). When Belisarius spoke to his troops before the battIe of Deci­
mum in Africa (Bell. 3.19.6), he told them that the Byzantine cause 
was just, since the Empire was merely recovering territory which was 
its own, and «the alliance of God follows naturally those who put 
justice forward." Yet, even if the assumptions of Totila and Belisarius 
were true, it need not follow that events are in any way predictable. 
Just before Artasires assassinated the tyrant Gontharis in North 
Africa, he told his accomplice that he was willing to do the deed, but 
he did not know if God would help him out of anger against the ty­
rant, or if He would choose this moment to avenge some sin which 
Artasires himself had committed, and oppose him (Bell. 4.28.12-13). 
Artasires appeared to accept the view that it was God's plan to punish 
sin; yet it was still an open question whose sin He might choose to 
punish at any given time, and since, I suppose, all men are sinners, 
God had very wide latitude. 

Finally in the Historia Arcana, Procopius put forward the view that 
Tt5X"1 co-operated with Justinian and Theodora in bringing destruction 
on the empire, and this became the basis for his belief that Justinian 



J. A. S. EVANS 97 

was lTlore than hUlTlan: he was the Prince of the Devils. What we have 
here is an inversion of the conventional Byzantine concept of the em­
peror as the vicegerent of God, the friend of the Logos. But the im­
portant point for our study is that Procopius does not conceive of TVXTJ 
acting as lTlere caprice when it brought plague, floods and earthquakes 
to second the evil caused directly by Justinian and his wife. Instead, he 
uses the coincidence to show that Justinian had supernatural power, 
and hence had the co-operation of TVXTJ. 28 

The role of TVXTJ is clearly ambiguous. Downey emphasized the 
parallels between Procopius' use of TVX7J and Augustinian thought 
on the subject, and there are passages in Procopius which might have 
met St Augustine's approval, as Downey pointed out.29 Before the 
victory at Decimum in the Vandal War, Procopius paused to wonder 
at the ways of Heaven and men, noting how God, who sees from a 
more distant point what will come to pass, traces out the way that He 
thinks best for it to come. For God's purpose was that a path be made 
for TVX7J which presses on to the preordained end (Bell. 3.18.2-4). 
Again in the Historia Arcana (4.44-45), Procopius states that human 
affairs are governed by God; what men ascribe to TVX71 is simply that 
for which they can find no reasonable explanation. However, Mrs 
Cameron does not regard these <C Augustinian" passages as typical, and 
Elferink, as I have pointed out, attempts to show that Procopius' con­
cept of causation was dualist. The cause was God, who was reasonable, 
or TVXTJ, which was not. 

This ambiguity comes in part from the literary tradition which 
Procopius inherited. TVXTJ had played a role in history since Thucyd­
ides, and it is hardly less difficult to define it exactly in Polybius than 
it is in Procopius. By the time that the secular historians of Procopius' 
school came to use the concept, it had been reduced to literary con­
vention by the Second Sophistic, and, in fact, it is instructive to com­
pare Procopius' use of it with Herodian's. Like Procopius, Herodian is 
capable of using oalfLwv or something similar as a synonym (1.17.4). 
Chance could defeat excellent military tactics in war, as Alexander 
Severus discovered in his campaign against Persia (6.5.4). The TVXTJ of 
war is the final judge of a commander's strategy, as Herodian remarks 
elsewhere (3.7.1). In dealing with the fall of Cleander, he even speaks 

28 Cf B. Rubin, Das Zeitalter Iustinians I (Berlin 1960) 441-54; J. A. S. Evans, op.cit. (supra 
n.18) 126-39. 

29 Downey, op.cit. (supra n.7) 89-102. 

7-G•R •B•S• 



98 CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM IN PROCOPIUS OF CAESAREA 

of nature (~ cpvc,c) wanting to show how TV)(T] could exalt a man from 
the lowest depths, and then cast him down (1.13.6). There is here a 
hint that TV)(T] is nature's plaything, which we may compare with the 
similar hint in John the Cappadocian's words to Justinian, that TV)(T] 

was on the knees of God, like a lapdog or a toy (Bell. 3.10.13). But no­
where in Herodian do we get the same tension between TV)(T] acting 
freely, and at the same time as part of a pattern divinely preordained, 
that we get in Procopius. The literary inheritance has complicated the 
problem of free will and predestination. Procopius will not do away 
with TVX'YJ altogether, as his continuator Agathias did, for that would 
be too sharp a break with literary tradition; nor will he equate God 
and TVX'YJ completely, possibly because that would have involved him 
in the problem of how it was that God brought evil into the world. 
Yet, as I have shown earlier, he states his acceptance of an omnipotent 
God. 

One solution to our problem would be to dismiss TVX'YJ as an 
example of archaism in Procopius-a Christian writer suffering from 
indigestion as he tries to absorb a pagan concept. But before we do 
this, we should recall that the problem of predestination and free will 
seems to have concerned intellectual circles in Alexandria when Pro­
copius was a youth. Procopius was probably educated at Gaza,30 
which was a kind of intellectual outpost of Alexandria. The best­
known exposition of Alexandrine ideas on the question we are 
examining is the fifth book of Boethius' Philosophiae Consolatio, for al­
though Boethius' career belonged to Rome, Courcelle has shown that 
his doctrine derived from Ammonius and has suggested, less con­
vincingly, that Boethius actually studied in Alexandria.31 Boethius 
attempted to reconcile fortune and an omnipotent God by showing 
that God sawall things eternally and concurrently, although they 
took place in the world through a succession of time, for God, being 
eternal, is outside time. Hence for Him to foresee acts of free will does 
not destroy their free will or contingency. 

No such doctrine is elaborated in Procopius, nor should we expect 

30 Cf. G. Downey, "The Christian Schools in Palestine: a Chapter in Literary History," 
HarvLibBull 12 (1958) 297-319, esp. 314. The case for making Procopius an alumnus of the 
Gaza school is by no means proved, and, as Mrs Cameron has pointed out to me, we could 
as well make him an alumnus of Alexandria, where his continuator Agathias studied. 

31 P. Courcelle, Late Latin Writers and their Greek Sources (Cambridge [Mass.] 1969) 295-
318; cf. P. Merlan, "Ammonius Hermiae, Zacharias Scholasticus and Boethius," GRBS 9 
(1968) 198ff. 



J. A. S. BV ANS 99 

one. He was not a systematic philosopher. Yet Procopius and Boethius 
are worth comparison, for I would suggest that there are similarities 
between their views which derive from the speculations in Alexan­
dria. Procopius acknowledged the popular concept of 'TVX'YJ as some­
thing capricious and contrary to reason. This was how men defined it, 
though whether these men were Procopius' contemporaries, or (more 
likely) the host of writers before him who made the traditions of 
writing history, he did not say. Yet there is abundant evidence that 
Procopius himself believed that historical events operated within a 
teleological framework, which is not quite the same as saying that he 
was a fatalist. He felt that the surrender of Ravenna in 540 was pre­
ordained, that the sack of Antioch in the same year, though incompre­
hensible, must have accorded with a reasonable divine plan, and that 
even Narses' victory at Busta Gallorum was ordained from the be­
ginning. He attempted to explain the relationship between an omni­
potent God and TVX'YJ in one passage already cited from the Vandal 
War (Bell. 3.18.4), which deserves further consideration. God, he 
wrote, sees events from a "more distant point." He is like a man on a 
lofty hill who sees a broader scene because of his high vantage point, 
where he could mark out the distant path of the future. In its context 
this passage must mean that God's vision is increased in time by His 
vantage point, rather than in space, which would not make sense here. 
Yet Procopius went on to state that it was God's purpose to allow 
scope for contingency. God, from his position as an omnipotent God, 
knew the predestined ends, but this does not destroy their free will or 
their contingency, and God willed it so. 

There is here none of the careful logic with which Boethius comes 
to the conclusion that there is no necessary incompatibility between 
predestination and free will and contingency. Yet we may compare 
Procopius with one passage of Boethius :32 

For which cause it (God's discernment) is not called praevidence or 
foresight, but rather providence, because, placed far from inferior 
things, it overlooketh all things, as it were, from the highest top of 
things. Why, therefore, wilt thou have those things necessary which 
are illustrated by divine light, since that not even men make those 
things necessary which they see? ... But the present instant of men 
may well be compared to that of God in this: that as you see some 

32 Boeth. Cons.Phil. 5.6.69-80, LCL trans!' 



100 CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM IN PROCOPIUS OF CAESAREA 

things in your temporal instant, so He beholdeth all things in his 
eternal present. 

The parallel is not exact, for Boethius goes on to argue that God 
knows a thing will be, and yet that it need not be, which is too subtle 
for Procopius. Yet both tried to reconcile contingency and predestina­
tion by a comparison of space with time: as a man increases his vision 
in space by standing on a high hill, so God, freed from finite time and 
using the vantage point of eternity, increases His vision in time. But 
chance is none the less chance because God has picked out its path in 
the future. Thus the popular view of TVXTJ as mere caprice which was 
the legacy of literary tradition, did have validity for the historian after 
all. 

I would suggest, then, that Procopius was not agnostic and fatalist, 
and that he did not assign a large portion of historical causation to a 
purely pagan TVX'f}. Rather, he kept a place for contingency in histori­
cal causation, because he refused to see any real incompatibility 
between an omnipotent God and Divine foreknowledge on the one 
hand, and free will and contingency on the other. In doing so, he was 
reflecting the thought-world of Alexandria and, we may conjecture, 
of Gaza, where he may well have argued these questions with the 
schoolmen as a student. They were ideas which were not specifically 
Christian, for in the sixth century, pagan and Christian ideas of pre­
destination, free will and contingency were not always easy to separ­
ate. But at least we may say that Procopius' concept of TVXTJ was a 
product of his own time and education. It was not reused lumber from 
the pagan past, ill-digested and imperfectly comprehended by him. 

McMASTER UNIVERSITY 

December, 1970