I have blogged G.P. Baker before, and I admit I have a weakness for him. Some may consider him quaint and/or dated, but I truly enjoy his books.
Right now, I'm re-reading his Justinian, The Last Roman Emperor as background to our first December chat. The book is the last in his biographical series about personalities in Ancient Rome, beginning with Hannibal, and again I'm impressed by his intuitive approach to historical biography.
Here is how he introduces Justinian:
The name Justinian has become proverbial, like Joseph, and Judas, and Julius Caesar: and (as in their cases) it grew proverbial for one typical reason which has obscured the variety and immensity of its possessor's claims to our interest. Every lawyer knows the magnitude of Justinian in the history of law: but any one who prefers to walk at large in the vast fields of human life and human character, where most things look dwarfed, will find him bulking huger as a man and a husband than as a legislator. He was a great personality, whose story may enlarge our conceptions of the ideals which men may entertain, and the programmes to which they may elect to work. Even during his own life-time, there were people who believed that he was not a man at all, but a fiend and a limb of Satan. A man must take a very large size in characters before his enemies will pay him this kind of compliment. Because he was first of all a great man, Justinian was a good many other things also.
He possessed to a quite extraordinary degree a gift in which only Alexander the Great can have excelled him – the power of forming a point of contact and reconciliation for other strong personalities. His wife, whom he picked off the stage – and some said out of the gutter – was one of the most remarkable women who ever lived. He found and made one of the greatest soldiers – Belisarius…
…and then goes on to list other personages promoted by Justinian: the architect Anthemius of Tralles, builder of the Hagia Sophia, the jurist Tribunian – he of the Code and the Digest, the poets Paul the Silentiary and Romanus, and last but not least the historian Procopius of Caesarea. The narrative is vivid and does bring the characters and ancient Rome and Byzantium to life. Not to speak of the occasional sarcastic aside…
And he calls Theodora “the first feminist,” this in 1931!
Here are the other biographies in the series:
Hannibal
Sulla the Fortunate
Augustus
Tiberius Caesar
Constantine the Great And the Christian Revolution
