The Library
1774 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
501–600
4 works
529–534, with the Novels to 565
Latin and Greek
Corpus Juris Civilis
Justinian I and the commission of Tribonian · Justinian, c. 482 – 565
A thousand years of Roman law compressed into a code, a digest of the jurists, a students' textbook, and the new laws that followed. It opens by declaring the Trinity, closes the Academy at Athens, legislates on heretics, Jews, and pagans, and regulates the clergy in detail.
c. 545–553
Greek
Procopius of Caesarea · c. 500 – c. 565
Eight books on Justinian's campaigns in Persia, Africa, and Italy, by the secretary who accompanied Belisarius through most of them — including the fullest ancient description of a pandemic, the plague that reached Constantinople in 542.
c. 550–558; unpublished in his lifetime
Greek
Anecdota
Procopius of Caesarea · c. 500 – c. 565
The same author on the same reign, written for a drawer: Justinian as a demon who walked the palace at night without a head, Theodora's career before the throne recounted in detail no other ancient text matches, and a body count in the millions.
c. 554–560
Greek
Procopius of Caesarea · c. 500 – c. 565
A catalogue of Justinian's construction across the empire, opening with Hagia Sophia — a dome that seems not to rest on solid masonry but to hang by a golden chain from heaven — and running on through churches, forts, cisterns, and bridges.
4 of 1774 works