"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. Justinian is raked over the coals as cruel, venal, prodigal and incompetent as for Theodora, the reader is treated to the most detailed and titillating portrayals of vulgarity and insatiable lust combined with shrewish and calculating mean-spiritedness. The anecdotes claim to expose the secret springs of their public actions, as well as the private lives of the emperor, his wife and their entourage. The Secret History reveals an author who had become deeply disillusioned with the emperor Justinian and his wife, Empress Theodora, as well as Belisarius, his former commander and patron, and Antonina, Belisarius' wife. If this be the case, we can understand why the historian avenged himself in the Secret History, which is a veritable chronique scandaleuse of the Byzantine.
Current consensus generally dates it to 550 or 558, or maybe even as late as 562. The Secret History covers roughly the same years as the first seven books of the History of Justinian's Wars and appears to have been written after they were published. Its existence was already known from the Suda, which referred to it as the Anekdota, Latin Anecdota, "unpublished writings").
Historia Arcana) was discovered centuries later in the Vatican Library and published by Niccolò Alamanni in 1623 at Lyons.
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