Justinian

MYAKES

By the time Justinian became Emperor, Brother Elpidios, his family had been ruling the Roman Empire for more than eighty years. Like he says, people loved the house of Herakleios. People had reason to love it. Without the house of Herakleios, there probably wouldn't be a Roman Empire any more.

Justinian, now, by the time he's writing of here, he'd been Emperor about nine years. In those nine years, he'd taken all the goodwill people had for his family and chucked it right into the latrine. It might not have happened that way if some of the things he'd tried had worked out better- if we'd beaten the Arabs at Sebastopolis, for instance. Who but God can say for sure about something like that?

But what really wrecked things for him was that he went on doing whatever he thought he needed to do right then, and never had a clue that people were starting to spit when somebody said his name. Paul the patriarch and Sisinniakes both tried to tell him- you read me what they said. And you heard for yourself- he wouldn't listen.

Remember something else, too, Brother. Justinian was writing here years after what he's talking about. He still doesn't see or doesn't believe what people were telling him back then. He knew what happened to him. As long as he lived, he never figured out why.