Hurray and wait, it's a way of life!

Well, that was a slog. I had a follow-up today with one of Dr. M's associates because the man is insanely busy. Now I expect eye appointments to take a while, but this was epic.

I was there to see if the damn inflammation had gone away (spoiler: no, it hasn't.) But an additional test had been ordered that involved a dye infusion. Normally, when I'm warned ahead of time that someone is going to try to access one of my tiny little veins, I take preparatory steps to help them. I'll drain a 32oz bottle of water on the way to the appointment, I'll wear a hoodie to keep my arms warm, and I'll do exercises while waiting. That sort of thing.

But no warning, so after three stabs, no good vein. So they punted. I'm back on the Prednisolone Acetate drops again, and see Dr. M in August. Tomorrow, I have to go get a blood draw and pick up some meds.

One of the tests is a second check to see if I have Birdshot Chorioretinopathy, which would suck mightily.

The Original political tell-all book.

The Secret History by Procopius

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Something that I think most of us have become quite familiar with is the political tell-all book, released after a person or administration leaves office, these books expose how everything was awful and it wasn't the writer's fault. The Trump administration has produced a landslide of these books.

But what do you do when airing your grievances could easily get you quickly - and gruesomely - executed? That's the challenge that faced Procopius when he wanted to right a pretty libelous account of the reign of Justinian I and Empress Theodora. His work was only discovered a century after his death in the Vatican library.

Procopius was a legal scholar who was assigned to the "Last Roman General" Belisarius. Traveling with the Roman Army, Procopius wrote his History of the Wars covering everything from campaigns against the Persians to the destruction of the last Vandal kingdom and the reconquest of the West. His On Buildings chronicled the great works Justinian ordered, including the Hagia Sophia.

But at some time between 550-558 CE, he wrote the Secret History.

So, what's the book like? Procopius is a clear writer, and this translation carries that through. He rarely repeats himself and is clear when he is reporting things he did not witness himself. Most of his charges of the Imperial couple being greedy and capricious make some sense, but he has Justionioan bankrupting every noble in the Empire and leaving Legions to starve. Yet no revolution was ever raised against him. So the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. The same goes for the outrageous claims of personal depravity, maybe, but to what extent?

The claims that Justinian was actually fathered by a Demon, and was a shape-shifting monster himself might make for a good TTRPG campaign, but even Procopius admits these accounts were all third or fourth-hand.

We don't know why Procopius wrote this, or who his intended audience was. Was it an attempt to poison the legacy of a powerful emperor and an equally beloved general (Belisarius and his wife Antonia get equal vitriol thrown at them,) or just a personal rage letter, written so he didn't lose it in the Great Palace? We can't know for sure, Procopius took his secrets to his grave.

If you love Roman history at all, you need to read this book and reach your own conclusions.



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