We are told that a woman, who was not over-well dressed, was sailing with her husband in a boat towards the suburb across the strait; they met on their way some men of this faction, who took her away from her husband with threats, and placed her in their own boat.  When she entered the boat together with these young men, she secretly told her husband to take courage, and not to fear any evil for her.  “Never,” said she, “will I permit myself to be outraged;” and while her husband was gazing on her with the greatest sorrow, she sprang into the sea, and was never seen again.  Such were the outrages which the people of this faction dared to commit in Byzantium.

Yet all this did not so much gall the victims as Justinian’s offences against the State; for those who suffer most cruelly from evil-doers are in great part consoled by the expectation that the law and the authorities will avenge them.  If they have any hope for the future, men bear their present sufferings with a much lighter heart; but when they are outraged by the established government, they are naturally much more hurt by the evil which befalls them, and the improbability of redress drives them to despair.  Justinian’s fault was, not only that he turned a deaf ear to the complaints of the injured, but did not even disdain to behave himself as the avowed chief of this party; that he gave great sums of money to these youths, and kept many of them in his own retinue; that he even went so far as to appoint some of them to governments and other official posts.

CHAPTER VIII

These excesses took place not only in Byzantium, but in every city of the Empire:  for these disorders were like bodily diseases, and spread from thence over the whole Roman Empire.  But the Emperor cared not at all for what was going on, although he daily beheld what took place in the hippodrome, for he was exceedingly stupid, very much like a dull-witted ass, which follows whoever holds its bridle, shaking its ears the while.  This behaviour on the part of Justinian ruined everything.

As soon as he found himself the head of his uncle’s empire, he at once did his utmost to squander the public treasure over which he now had control.  For he lavished wealth extravagantly upon the Huns who from time to time came across and, ever afterwards, the Roman provinces were subjected to constant incursions; for these barbarians, having once tasted our wealth, could not tear themselves away from the road which led to it.  Justinian also threw away great sums upon the construction of large moles, as if he thought to restrain the force of the never-resting waves.  He ran out stone breakwaters from the beach far into the water to divert the currents of the ocean, and, as it were, to match his wealth against the power of the sea.