Here is a good story of palace intrigue and conspiracy. We turn our attention to late antiquity, to the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy.
Amalasuntha (c. 495-535) was the daughter of Ostrogothic King Theoderic the Great. When Theoderic died, his grandson Athalaric nominally became king. But being a child, the real power lay with his mother Amalasuntha, who ruled as regent.
I was talking to my father on the phone earlier today. He was telling me that he had been speaking recently to another man he knew. It had been a sad conversation with this friend of his.
This man had suddenly discovered he had serious health problems. Basically, he found out that he had prostate cancer issues.
“You know, it’s amazing,” he told me. “There is all this push in the culture here for awareness of women’s health issues. We hear about breast cancer awareness week. We hear about how we should care about female slavery in the Third World. We hear about how we should care about reproductive rights. We hear about how we should care about all things about women’s health.
I had conducted many jury trials in state court before my first jury trial in federal court. One of the differences in federal court was that the attorneys had the ability, after the trial was over, to review the written critiques that the jurors had left behind.
In a previous article here we recounted the dramatic fall of one of the Emperor Justinian’s venal officials, John of Cappadocia. The key roles of this drama were the Empress Theodora and her amoral compatriot Antonina (c. 484-565), the wife of Belisarius. It is now time to relate yet more adventures of this depraved yet admittedly fascinating figure. Almost all of what we know about her and her unscrupulous maneuverings comes from the historian Procopius, whose Secret History (Anecdota) is a scorching indictment of Justinian, Theodora, and their court. He is not an impartial source; and he seems to have been a snubbed official who revenged himself on the court by chronicling their indiscretions for posterity. Yet there is some truth to his accounts, and his is not a voice that can easily be dismissed.
The Emperor Justinian (A.D. 485-565) and his wife, the Empress Theodora, are well-known sovereigns of the eastern Roman Empire. The absolute power which centered around the throne at this period in history encouraged palace intrigues of all sorts, and their reign was no exception. One of the more interesting stories of betrayal and revenge during their rule is that of John the Cappadocian, the Praetorian Prefect of the East. He was a native of Caesarea in Cappadocia, and was of obscure background. He came to the attention of the emperor somehow during the scope of his duties as a magister militum (master of soldiers). By his own schemes he rose up through the ranks to become Praetorian Prefect around A.D. 531.
The foremost lesson of philosophy should be the lesson of perspective. When I say perspective, I mean the different interpretation of events that can be given from viewing the matter from different vantage points.
What we think is a product of our relative position to an issue.
You say to me, how oppressed I am with earthly worries and anxieties. I can barely continue in my day-to-day struggle. I feel overwhelmed by the brutality and iniquity of the world.
Long poems generally bore me. Even the most eloquent verses, stacked up on each other at great length, can wear on the reader. Perhaps every long poem is best digested as a series of short poems, read at one’s leisure. No one ever wished a long poem to be longer.
In this spirit, I will make a short post today. I’ll give you a little something to flavor the palate. The heavy lifting we can do some other time.
Plutarch’s essay On Socrates’s Personal Deity (593A-594A) contains an idea that I find appealing. He proposes that every man has a “personal deity” that looks out for him and helps him in a time of need.
We can think of this deity as a kind of guardian angel.
The personal deity is an experienced attendant-god or demi-god, who is well-versed in the struggles of life. He now watches over the struggles of mortal man, and every now and then reaches down to help those he believes are deserving of his aid.
Toby Green’s excellent book Inquisition: The Reign of Fear contains an interesting story that highlights how uncertain and adventurous life could be in ages past. The story concerns one Antonio Marques da Sylva, a Brazilian man who lived in seventeenth century Bahia.
In 1647 he was married to Maria Figeuira de Abreu. He had children with her and lived in Bahia for three years. He then decided to sail to Portugal for business in 1650. What seemed like a simple decision actually set in motion a bizarre sequence of events.
I often get questions on book recommendations. People will ask me, “What book do you recommend for learning about XYZ historical event?”
Or they will say, “What book do you recommend for learning about XYZ philosophy?”
Or whatever.
And this is fine. I always am happy to give my opinion. I like to discuss, to critique, and to analyze, because this is how the forward movement of knowledge works.
Quintus Curtius 
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