I've been studying the Later Roman Empire in university and we've inevitably come to the subject of Procopius. Having read a fair few extracts from the work I can't seem to pin down what Procopius hoped to achieve with this work. Whilst it's quite clearly a critique of Justinian (and co)'s reign, I'm unsure as to whether it is an almost satirical piece or a viewing of events tinted by a vivid imagination! I'm hoping by asking this sub-reddit I can get a clear view of what modern Academic opinion sees as the various themes and motives behind this work.
Great question! This is a very complicated issue and I will not pretend that I can cover everything here. Different historians have different views of Procopius, and personally I don’t think we can say that there is anything approaching a ‘consensus’ yet. Most of the things I talk about here are still be up for debate and the historians I mention often hold very different views. There are also two important forthcoming publications focusing specifically on this historian, which will surely provide more material for discussion.^1
As you have noted already, the Secret History is a very negative interpretation of Justinian’s reign, so I think the best way to start is to look at other negative assessments of the emperor. From other sources, we know that Justinian’s regime did upset the traditional elite of Constantinople, the bureaucrats that ran his administration, as well as the Chalcedonian and miaphysite parties within the church (in older literature you might see ‘monophysite’ being used for the latter group; modern scholarship increasingly favour either miaphysite or non-Chalcedonian as a descriptor).^2 As such, the fact that Procopius, a seemingly well-connected man who had risen to prominence due to his service to Justinian’s most famous general, eventually turned against the emperor is actually quite understandable. Indeed, Justinian’s successor, Justin II, would later actively repudiate many of the old emperor’s policies. From this perspective, Procopius’ words were grounded in reality, not fantasy, as there were numerous reports of conspiracies against the emperor and Justinian's actions were hardly viewed positively by everyone.
Moreover, regardless of how exaggerated his account was, it was still written for a purpose. For examples of this, we can look for clues outside of the Secret History. There were for instance many veiled barbs against the government in Procopius’ Wars, an account written for public consumption. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Procopius was an outright revolutionary as Anthony Kaldellis did, but Procopius was clearly not satisfied with the direction the empire was going in by the 550s, so it made sense that some of it bled into his relatively straightforward history. The same can be said for his On Buildings, as by its very nature of being a flowery panegyric, it can be seen as a piece of ‘insincere flattery’, one that did not put forward Procopius' true thoughts on the emperor. This is especially so when we note that by c.550, when On Buildings was first written, Procopius had already turned against the regime.^3 His overwhelmingly positive rhetoric here may seem contradictory to his other works, but Procopius was above all a human being, fearful of an oppressive emperor, worried about the loyalty of his family, and one with some lingering affection for his former patron Belisarius. Contradictions are simply a part of human nature and Procopius’ words instead provide us with an insight into the messy world of imperial politics, in which he condemned the emperor in private but praised Justinian in public.
Like so many of his contemporaries, Procopius was far from an unbiased historian, but one who was very much involved in the elite circles of Constantinople. As such, it is important to take into account his other works in understanding his Secret History, simply because it was not written in isolation – it was perhaps a product of a ‘vivid imagination’, as you put it, but does that make it any less historical? Procopius’ hatred was a real one and he warned the audience darkly of a danger to his life if the Secret History was revealed to the public, whilst his cross-referencing of events recounted in the Wars is a clear signal that he thought it too dangerous to speak about his true feelings in his more public work. On the other hand, we should also note that not everyone felt the same way. Roger Scott has for instance argued that Procopius' criticisms in the Secret History can be matched by the praise found in John Malalas' Chronicle.^4 In a sense, Justinian's propaganda was recorded positively by a loyalist, whilst Procopius twisted imperial policies and framed them in a negative light. From this, we can extrapolate just how varied contemporary attitudes can be and the difficulties we encounter when we read the Secret History by itself.
For myself, I think that the most satisfying explanation for the composition of the Secret History is that Procopius had sought to preserve his position when it appeared that Justinian was about to be overthrown in the late 540s, possibly to be replaced by his cousin, Germanus.^5 With this possible regime change in mind, Procopius had perhaps written his invective in order to distance himself from the weakened administration of Justinian, if only to make himself palatable to the men who would soon take power. After all, Procopius had been attached to Belisarius, who was surely a loyal servant of Justinian – Germanus on the other hand was seemingly hated by Theodora and so disliked the circle that had gathered around Justinian. Procopius’ Secret History neatly condemned everyone associated with this group, leaving the door open for a future rapprochement with Emperor Germanus.
This is of course just one interpretation and it is probably best for you to make up your own mind by reading the arguments yourself. It is also true that we shouldn't read the text too deeply and see everything as an allusion to something, but a broad understanding of the sources will only help you to get a sense of the world of Justinian and Procopius. We have so many primary sources from the sixth century, such as Marcellinus Comes, John Malalas, John Lydus, Agathias, Menander Protector, Evagrius, Agapetus, Paul the Silentiary, pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor, and John of Ephesus, that I find it strange that Procopius is still often used as the one-and-only source for Justinian's reign. Sources from even further away, such as Gregory of Tours from Gaul and Cassiodorus from Italy, are also essential to our understanding of this period. By looking at these sources together, you would get not the impression that Procopius was unusual, but instead just one perspective out of many writing about the court of Justinian. He happens to be the one with the greatest fame amongst later historians and his Secret History is indeed the most scandalous, but that does not diminish its value as a historical source, nor should we privilege it as a reliable representation of the atmosphere in Constantinople.
References:
See in the near future C. Lillington-Martin and E. Turquois (eds.), Procopius: Current Perspectives and M. Meier (ed.) Brill's Companion to Procopius. For a neat summary of recent work on Procopius, see G. Greatrex, 'Perceptions of Procopius in Recent Scholarship', Histos, 8 (2014), pp.76-121 and 'Perceptions of Procopius in Recent Scholarship (Addenda)', Histos, 8 (2014), pp.121a-e.
This trend was started by D. Winkler, ‘Miaphysitism: A New Term for Use in the History of Dogma and in Ecumenical Theology’, The Harp, 10 (1997), pp.33-40. But see also the critiques by F. Millar, 'The Evolution of the Syrian Orthodox Church in the Pre-Islamic Period: From Greek to Syriac?', Journal of Early Christian Studies, 21.1 (2013), pp.51-2.
A very recent development in the study of Procopius is the discovery that there are two extant recensions of On Buildings; the earlier, shorter recension dates to c.550. See F. Montinaro, ‘Byzantium and the Slavs in the reign of Justinian. Comparing the two recensions of Procopius’s Buildings’, in V. Ivanišević and M. Kazanski (eds.), The Pontic-Danubian Realm in the Period of the Great Migration (Paris, 2011), pp.89–114. See also the very interesting perspective from F. Montinaro, 'Power, Taste and the Outsider: Procopius and the Buildings Revisited', in G. Greatrex and H. Elton (eds.), Shifting Genres in Late Antiquity (Farnham, 2015), pp.191-206.
R. Scott, 'Malalas, The Secret History, and Justinian's Propaganda', Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 39 (1985), pp.99-109.
For the suggestion that Germanus was involved, see J. Signes Codoñer, ‘Prokops Anekdota und Justinians Nachfolge’, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik, 53 (2003), pp.47-82. For the more cautious reading that we can't identify Germanus as a potential replacement for Justinian, see H. Börm, ‘Procopius, His Predecessors, and the Genesis of the Anecdota: Antimonarchic Discourse in Late Antique Historiography’, in H. Börm (ed.), Antimonarchic Discourse in Antiquity (Stuttgart, 2015), pp.305-46.
Suggested Reading (I definitely did not cover everything, so it is really worthwhile for you to take a look at these books):
Averil Cameron, Procopius and the Sixth Century (1985) - the standard 'orthodox' text on Procopius
Anthony Kaldellis, Procopius of Caesarea: Tyranny, History, and Philosophy at the End of Antiquity (2004) - the standard 'revisionist' text on Procopius
Peter Sarris, Economy and Society in the Age of Justinian (2006) and Peter Bell, Social Conflict in the Age of Justinian: Its Nature, Management, and Mediation (2013) - the two authors together provide a very up-to-date overview of social and political conflict under Justinian.
Shane Bjornlie, Politics and Tradition between Rome, Ravenna and Constantinople: A Study of Cassiodorus and the Variae (2013) - this book covers so much more than Cassiodorus and places Justinian's reign in its Mediterranean context, an aspect of the sixth century that I feel is still overlooked.
Thank god /u/shlin28 did the heavy lifting on this, because I was starting to get a headache at trying to figure out where to start on this. After all, there are entire careers based upon understanding the perspective of Procopius.
I would say that it is the standard understanding that the Secret History was written as a complaint against Justinian. However there are definitely historians who take the view that you can't actually derive Procopius' actual feelings on Justininian because his work so neatly fits so clearly into a polemical template.
Henning Borm wrote a fantastic article about how Procopius may have actually written The Secret History in anticipation of a coup of Justinian that never came, a political situation we are not privy to now. He explains this would be why the Secret History was never updated afterward, especially when we know that Procopius continued to write more positive things about Justinian after the Secret History. This would mean that Procopius didn't write the Secret History because he necessarily hated Justinian, but because he wanted to position himself in the aftermath of any coup as "never being on Justinian's side." This is in fact the problem frequently of attempting to scrutinize the positions of skilled rhetoricians like say Libanius. We're never entirely sure where his rhetoric ends and his personal belief begins.
Similar to the problems of taking a polemic at face value, is a very mind-bending suggestion by Leslie Brubaker in the Age of Justinian about how we can't take Procopius' account of Theodora's behavior during the Nika riots at face value. We're very used to the story of her standing up to a scared Justinian, saying "I don't know about you, but an imperial robe is a fine burial shroud!" Well Brubaker points out that this quote taken in the context of how gender was understood in the 6th century was not a celebration of Theodora, but an illustration of how upside down the world had become. The people were taking control over the emperor. The men were cowering and the women were leading.
So with these two examples in mind, feel free to continue to suspect Procopius' motives, and understand that the situation with all ancient history, is rarely can we ever actually know what "really" happened (sorry Reddit). We're far more likely to be able to glean "what people themselves thought was likely to happen."
Sources:
Börm, Henning. “Procopius, His Predecessors, and the Genesis of the Anecdota: Antimonarchic Discourse in Late Antique Historiography.” In Antimonarchic Discourse in Antiquity. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2015.
Maas, Michael, ed. Age of Justinian. The Cambridge Companion. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.