Somehow, the algorithm dropped me into your channel. It is good to see someone who’s not over the age of 60 surrounded by significant literature. I have subscribed. You give an old Professor Hope! Well done.
Lately I have been enjoying the scholarship of Jason Breshears. The oldest records poured over (although not the cuneiform) that prize goes to Ancient Mysteries-Andrew Christie.
I’m guessing most likely he worked for it and as with all of us old folks, we find somebody that’s younger that enjoys the same stuff we do we gift. Or could be just location of a friend?
Tom , It’s my hope that your appearances here on TH-cam spark a love of reading and history in the youth of our world. We need a force like yourself with the love and passion for learning . You set a wonderful example . May you catch on like the plague.
There's a suggestion that I rather like that suggests that the _Anekdota_ may have been written during the plague while Justinian was seen as likely to die. If so, Procopius may have been trying to distance himself from Justinian -- perhaps as Justinian's historian he was tied too closely to him -- and position himself for a new regime. After all, it's not as if invectives against emperors were not published -- just not against living ones.
I quite like that too. I also like Brian Croke's insistence that the Anekdota should rightly be seen as the final book of the Wars, as that is what it appears to be to Procopius himself.
Will you? Kindly insruct this inquirer? How can I enhance my font? WITH "italics". Your time and patience in telling me would be greatly appreciated, I assure you!; Gratefully yours, Gregg Oreo Long Beach CA Etats Unis
@@greggoreo6738 There may be a "proper" way to do this, but you can do this by placing an understroke character "_" before and after each word to be italicized. For this to work, each such word must be preceded and followed by a space character " ". This means that you can't immediately follow the word by punctuation, like a period at the end of the sentence. There has to be a space after each _italicized_ _word_ . It won't be in italics when you type it, but it will appear in italics when you POST it. You can use the ":" character to insert emojis ":sm" will present you with a menu to chose emojis. Character "*" can give you *bold* in the same manner as the italics method above, hyphen "-" gives you -striken- -out- .
Have been following your shorts for a while appreciating your passion and knowledge… glad to see you’re going longer-form. Your channel deserves and I’m sure will accumulate a large following and I’m happy to be here relatively early! Keep up the great work.
Excellent Tom, really excellent. Thank you. I find it fascinating that Procopius's Secret History is becoming popular again. Maybe it's the times we are living in and how Procopius was sending a warning through this book.
This is one of the most impressive youtube videos I have ever watched... A trail that had started in 550 ad's anatolia, passed through renaissance italy and reformation northern europe, and reached us today...
I'd love more of your long form work, it's a topic I know very little about and a curated dip into rare, important and interesting books, book related topics and frankly whatever you want to show us! Thank you for your work, already a channel I keenly follow.
Hi @Tom Ayling,I just discovered your channel and i am all all about mysteries & secrets.I’m a hardcore fan of History Channel’s Curse Of Oak Island & the possible burial of massive Knights Templar treasure and possibly ancient christian relics from Jerusalem when they were the guardians of crusader pilgrims to the Holy Land & Jerusalem.Anyway I have always been blown away about how Justinian built such a massive incredible beautiful Church in Constantinople.I mean all European Cathedrals are mindblowing how they did stuff with no electricity & power tools.The massive spires & domes with such heavy stone work.I would very much be interested in your catalog.
Hey Tom! Found this video through your short. Unsolicited, but I think more people would’ve found this video if there was a link to this on the corresponding short. Really love your work!
I would love to know what sparked your passion with the these old books. I find your vids specifically the information fascinating and just curious what was the starting point for you. Was it a particular old book? If you ever do a vid on what led to this point in your journey it’d be very interesting I’m sure to all of us.
I addressed this briefly in a 'Short' video recently titled 'My First Rare Book (And Where I've Been). I can also speak in a longer video about it if you would like!
She was a prostitute before being "saved" by Justinian, before he became emperor, she was the only empress till then that used to be not only from such a low class but an actual prostitute, and she was insanely smart and a great empress too, she saved justinian from death
The first time a book was published under the title, "The Secret History" was in 1623, by Alemanni. The fact that the first book published under the title, in English, "The Secret History," in 1674, does not make it "the first book ever published under the title, "The Secret History", but the first in English. In the 17th century everyone with a secondary-school education read Latin. Francis Bacon -- the English chancellor-- 's "Essays" were published first in Latin and then translated into English. Notice that your 1685 example of a "Secret History" discusses Procopius's book in its Greek title, "Anekdota". It's not the English-language translation of Alemanni, but the Latin title that is the model.
Most people are shocked when they find out that these people were all drug addicts. I was to find out that even Jesus was dosing the burning purple and snake venom as well. The Anecdota was explaining how they used psychedelics and how they were basically performing NDE’s to get knowledge from the spiritual world. I’m learning ancient Greek right now, so I can revisit all of these books myself. None of us will truly have an understanding of our past unless we learn ancient Greek.
I feel like a killjoy for asking how much of what Procopius actually wrote survived, or whether historians in the intervening centuries didn't have an axe to grind with Justinian and used the legend of a scandalous unpublished history as a convenient container for their own criticisms. Sort of "I'm not saying anything, but in the Anecdota, Procopius said that yadda yadda, keep in mind I'm just quoting him ... " I just feel like we're taking a lot on faith in thinking that it's actually Procopius's own work as opposed to a collection of tales by other people that were attributed to a book that everyone says was written but wasn't even actually seen. It's a super-cool story either way, but at the same time I know how gossip works, even among 14th century academics. 🙂
A _lot_ of Procopius survives. The whole of his major work, _The History of the Wars of Justinian,_ survives (five volumes in the Loeb edition - he is our major Greek historian of the sixth century) and his _Buildings of Justinian_ too, as well as the _Anecdota_ (each a single Loeb volume). And, yes, it is is recognizably Procopius who is writing.
@@johnleake5657 I think a lot of them don't realize they should be in that condition. If I had a nickel for every historian of ancient Rome who takes as proven fact everything that some centurion scribbled on a latrine wall ...
Very interesting - did not know about the plethora of "secret histories" launched by Procopius's work. Early precursor of today's tell-all celebrity bios ;-) Speaking of temporarily lost books, would you be willing to talk about De Rerum Natura? I have my book group reading The Swerve, and I think your viewers would find it interesting.
Having just glanced over the first chapter of said book, I can only laugh at your fear of the perceived salaciousness of its contents putting you at odds with youtube. It basically says she committed adultery.. a lot and had numerous lovers, taking pains to conceal it from her husband, and failing that trying to talk her way out of it using feminine charms. Hardly 50 shades of grey, or chatterlys lover. If anything given the roman obsession with debauchry it was downright restrained.
Having read Procopius' Secret History, I can't say I found the bulk of it unbelievable. Let's face it, occasionally, you encounter a Trajan - but for the most part, people who wield the kind of absolute power that Justinian and Theodora wielded are usually partially or totally corrupted by it. I know it's fashionable for historians to dismiss Procopius as unreliable, but aside from some of the most extreme charges - the accusations of being a demon, for example - I found nothing in the history that didn't sound like exactly what would happen if two imperfect rulers were given limitless power. The Secret History can be ugly and depressing but I see no reason why events couldn't have happened pretty much the way Procopius said they did.
Full and revised translation of Procopius in modern English without the expurgations would give a fascinating insight into who the Byzantines thought they were. Were they fully aware of the history of ancient Rome, did they see themselves as the same people, were they hide bound by their heritage. I wonder what the Italians thought of them? Long lost relatives or marauding interlooers?
Penguin Classics published a modern translation, by G.A. Williamson, in 1966. In the Introduction, the translator advises that Edward Gibbon provided his readers with the suppressed passage, but in Greek, with a Latin commentary, saying (with a certain degree of snark) that it "must be veiled in the obscurity of a learned language". The standard edition of the Greek original is that of the German scholar Haury, published in Leipzig in 1913, but there is also the Loeb Classical Library edition, with facing pages in Greek and English, dating from 1935, published, as all the Loeb Classical Library, by Harvard University Press.
Don't be fooled by the presenter's youthful appearance (he looks about 17!) But he's got the inside story on over 1000 years of the esoteric arcana of history. 🎓⭐
These books are very interesting. I suppose some of those things written in there can't be taken at face value, Procopius probably had reasons to heavily dislike those people, but in all those books, there must be interesting historical events and facts in there, probably hidden by the official versions of history. And I'd bet there is hidden historical knowledge and books that the system has hidden from the public for different reasons throughout the times, and most of history we know of is mostly all altered and approved by the system of each era, and the differences to the actual events and true history could be massive. Even if not, all those books are still very interesting.
The fact that there is no original manuscript dating at least from the 8th or 9th century makes me think that the Anecdota could be a 16th century hoax.
Also the only other channel I’ve heard ever discuss this piece of history is Asha Logos. So for any of the audience wanting further viewing on this check him out.
Because the parts about justinians wife were cut out of the latin print does that mean those sections are lost to time or are there still copies from before then?
It would be fascinating to analyze the consumption & approval statistics on "secret knowledge" books, in parallel... In the world I come from, secret histories, secret present, and secret plans for the future are all called conspiracy theories, but a vague handle on what some folks call "secret knowledge" is practically all it takes to understand the motivations and machinations behind bizarre and otherwise inexplicable events. It's actually problematic, however, that even in fiction, the most popular subjects are generally the most grotesquely sensational. 🤔 In vetting secret histories, it's evidently enough for most folks to simply WANT something to be true. God forbid, irony intended, a famous, more virtuous, more talented person than themselves actually turn out to be anything other than a constructed sham. The public at large actually has a STRONG, SELF-INTERESTED motivation to reimagine onetime paragons of character as (curiously inversely-proportional 🤔) villains.
Anybody have a clue why the first edition of the rediscovered 'Secret History' published in 1623 has numerous Stars of David on its spine @6:02 ? Curious as to the symbolism here.
Okay, so this Procopius fella 'published' 2 books that contradicted each other, basically one book is truthful and the other is not, and I have no idea which is which, but all I know is that I can't trust this fella, Procopius because he lied (by making false statements and/or claims) in one of those 2 books.
It turns out that there is a NOTHER Suda, a secret Suda, that says that the other Suda was a false work, and that there was indeed no extant manifest copy of the Alt history of Procopius.
David Drake and Eric Flint wrote a series of science fiction novels about Belisarius. I remember that they portrayed Procopius as a back biting little sh*t. Given The Secret History, I supposed they would have to. But it brings up the question of if anything in the Secret History was even true. Would the publication of the Secret History be the genesis for idea of writing conspiracy theories books?
I’m so lost what was the special secret history that the book was trying to covet? It just seems like it was a guy who talked a bunch of smack about two guys and their wives.
I always thought of "Secret Histories" as a slander towards Justinian, since we have to take into account that Procopious was a Jew. And Justinian inacted laws that limited the many of the freedoms of the jewish community in the empire. Thus Procopious' work sounds like a typical jewish slander against a christian ruler that did them wrong.
i thought and considered the same idea.. the 'opposition' in a political sense we cant trust. just as the ruling power of the day by the way haha. who knows ..
@@be2the4out Well it's not necessary that we should not trust the opposition of a ruling power. But we have to take into account that history isn't a "clean coin" as we say here. If anything we should always mark claims of historians as "possible but not certain" if there are no other ancient historians/texts confirming their claims. Procopious's Secret history is the sole source of Procopiou's claims. He starts the book by saying that what he writes in it will later be confirmed by others....yet no other historians or writers confirm the more exotic claims of Procopious. And there are like 3-4 other historians that have a record(big or small) of Justinian's rule. Malalas is one of thse that will have an extensive list of events during Justinian's rule. Now decent historians actually say that Malalas is probably using government propaganda as his source, but they also will say that Procopiou's claims could also be propaganda to smear Justinian. To make things worse..."the secret history" was unknown up until the 16-th century, when it was discovered. And the only reason it is attributed to Procopious is that historians concluded that the text read as if it was written by Procopious(based on his earlier works). However we do have an account of another historian that lived during the time of Procopious, who was inspired by is works, so he also wrote in that style. So it's not hard to imagine that someone would mimic Procopiou's style.
i know there is no real way of knowing but how would the original text have been preserved off the record for that long especially in ancient times? Was it just hidden in library collections and recopied over the years and was able to quietly survive?
Sorry but when some guy comes and says that what serious historical writer wrote about someone was, "unrepeatable," (even now,) then I simply refuse to take him or the channel remotely seriously. That was when I lost interest.
Precopius was a man who had a BUNCH of sour Grapes. Belisaurius was a great General. Justinian was a great Emperor. ....in his reign, the greatest Christian Church in the world was built. He survived the black death. And he loved his wife. Was he perfect? No. But he was Great.
Somehow, the algorithm dropped me into your channel. It is good to see someone who’s not over the age of 60 surrounded by significant literature. I have subscribed. You give an old Professor Hope! Well done.
Same for this old pharmacist 👍🏻
but too few of those. sadly..what we see mainly nowadays is ignorant loudmouths i love the roman historians.
Lately I have been enjoying the scholarship of Jason Breshears. The oldest records poured over (although not the cuneiform) that prize goes to Ancient Mysteries-Andrew Christie.
how come someone that young afford those bookshelves? a room that large? those underhanging lights. hmmmmm
I’m guessing most likely he worked for it and as with all of us old folks, we find somebody that’s younger that enjoys the same stuff we do we gift. Or could be just location of a friend?
Tom , It’s my hope that your appearances here on TH-cam spark a love of reading and history in the youth of our world. We need a force like yourself with the love and passion for learning . You set a wonderful example . May you catch on like the plague.
Parents are to be the ones to do this.
Monkey see monkey do.
There's a suggestion that I rather like that suggests that the _Anekdota_ may have been written during the plague while Justinian was seen as likely to die. If so, Procopius may have been trying to distance himself from Justinian -- perhaps as Justinian's historian he was tied too closely to him -- and position himself for a new regime. After all, it's not as if invectives against emperors were not published -- just not against living ones.
I quite like that too. I also like Brian Croke's insistence that the Anekdota should rightly be seen as the final book of the Wars, as that is what it appears to be to Procopius himself.
@@tomwayling, oh, where does he say that? I'm a bit out of date! My suggestion was raised by Henning Börm.
Will you? Kindly insruct this inquirer? How can I enhance my font?
WITH "italics". Your time and patience in telling me would be greatly appreciated, I assure you!; Gratefully yours, Gregg Oreo Long Beach CA Etats Unis
@@greggoreo6738 There may be a "proper" way to do this, but you can do this by placing an understroke character "_" before and after each word to be italicized. For this to work, each such word must be preceded and followed by a space character " ". This means that you can't immediately follow the word by punctuation, like a period at the end of the sentence. There has to be a space after each _italicized_ _word_ . It won't be in italics when you type it, but it will appear in italics when you POST it. You can use the ":" character to insert emojis ":sm" will present you with a menu to chose emojis. Character "*" can give you *bold* in the same manner as the italics method above, hyphen "-" gives you -striken- -out- .
Thanks for revealing basically nothing, what a waste of time that was.
Have been following your shorts for a while appreciating your passion and knowledge… glad to see you’re going longer-form. Your channel deserves and I’m sure will accumulate a large following and I’m happy to be here relatively early! Keep up the great work.
Excellent Tom, really excellent. Thank you. I find it fascinating that Procopius's Secret History is becoming popular again. Maybe it's the times we are living in and how Procopius was sending a warning through this book.
Thanks so much! Whether it was a book ahead of its time, or its revelations about power, corruption and scandal are just timeless, I'm not sure
@@tomwayling How have you not discussed that this is not an out-and-out forgery?
Holy mackerel, I recently found a beautiful Folio edition of this at Moe's in Berkeley. Can't wait to crack it open.
What a treasure your content is! I love history and finding the history in its honest form, not the polished, approved versions. You have a fan!
Discovered you recently Tom. Really enjoy listening to your love of books and History. Thank you ❤
Thank you!
Tom is the best!!
This is one of the most impressive youtube videos I have ever watched...
A trail that had started in 550 ad's anatolia, passed through renaissance italy and reformation northern europe, and reached us today...
I'd love more of your long form work, it's a topic I know very little about and a curated dip into rare, important and interesting books, book related topics and frankly whatever you want to show us! Thank you for your work, already a channel I keenly follow.
Thank you for all this, is amazing to learn all these details, to see the Books! I hope that whoever will buy these treasures will keep them safe.
Thank you! My greatest pleasure is finding worthy homes for these books!
Very interesting! I really enjoy your short form videos so I knew a longer video would be exceptional.
Thank you Roxanne!
Fantastic video, thank you for making and uploading it! Love these untold stories from history!
Glad you enjoyed it! It's a video I really enjoyed making
Hi @Tom Ayling,I just discovered your channel and i am all all about mysteries & secrets.I’m a hardcore fan of History Channel’s Curse Of Oak Island & the possible burial of massive Knights Templar treasure and possibly ancient christian relics from Jerusalem when they were the guardians of crusader pilgrims to the Holy Land & Jerusalem.Anyway I have always been blown away about how Justinian built such a massive incredible beautiful Church in Constantinople.I mean all European Cathedrals are mindblowing how they did stuff with no electricity & power tools.The massive spires & domes with such heavy stone work.I would very much be interested in your catalog.
Wow, reading this online - stunningly shocking!
Thank you for highlighting this work.
all fine and dandy but I want the actual dirty details...not just a history of how it was preserved and came to light and where can I get a copy?
Thank you for the remarkable video. I appreciate your passion and love seeing all the books. Good luck!
Wow ! Serendipitous synchronicity! Never heard of you, but I'm glad to have found you! Nice work ! Lux et Veritas 🙏🏻 ❤️🔥 🖖🏻!
Another humdinger video. Thank you for sharing. Anthony Ireland.
Thank you Anthony! It was a pleasure to make
Hey Tom! Found this video through your short. Unsolicited, but I think more people would’ve found this video if there was a link to this on the corresponding short. Really love your work!
Thank you so much for this. Love the long form!
More evidence that in all the years of recorded history human behavior remains the same, only our accessories change.
Fascinating, thanks for posting!
I would love to know what sparked your passion with the these old books. I find your vids specifically the information fascinating and just curious what was the starting point for you. Was it a particular old book? If you ever do a vid on what led to this point in your journey it’d be very interesting I’m sure to all of us.
I addressed this briefly in a 'Short' video recently titled 'My First Rare Book (And Where I've Been). I can also speak in a longer video about it if you would like!
These books are a million times better than anything being written today. I can’t believe the crap that’s being published now.
I can scarcely believe that people could believe the crap that you can't believe is being published now.
Very well said.
Thank you for that excellent discussion. The story reminds me a bit of the lost book in “The Name of the Rose”
I appreciate the longer form content ❤
Procopius invented a genre that would unveil itself as royal gossip. And we love him for it.
Now, I just want to know what the heck Theodora did.
She was a prostitute before being "saved" by Justinian, before he became emperor, she was the only empress till then that used to be not only from such a low class but an actual prostitute, and she was insanely smart and a great empress too, she saved justinian from death
The first time a book was published under the title, "The Secret History" was in 1623, by Alemanni. The fact that the first book published under the title, in English, "The Secret History," in 1674, does not make it "the first book ever published under the title, "The Secret History", but the first in English.
In the 17th century everyone with a secondary-school education read Latin. Francis Bacon -- the English chancellor-- 's "Essays" were published first in Latin and then translated into English.
Notice that your 1685 example of a "Secret History" discusses Procopius's book in its Greek title, "Anekdota". It's not the English-language translation of Alemanni, but the Latin title that is the model.
Imagine what the Vatican is squatting on.
I really enjoyed this video. Thankyou
I'm so glad! This was a video I really wanted to make
Most people are shocked when they find out that these people were all drug addicts. I was to find out that even Jesus was dosing the burning purple and snake venom as well. The Anecdota was explaining how they used psychedelics and how they were basically performing NDE’s to get knowledge from the spiritual world. I’m learning ancient Greek right now, so I can revisit all of these books myself. None of us will truly have an understanding of our past unless we learn ancient Greek.
Well done! Thank you.
Excellent research!
Very good stuff! Thank you. I'll look forward to following up on your resources mentioned!
Incredible video!!! Can’t wait to see what you continue creating.
I feel like a killjoy for asking how much of what Procopius actually wrote survived, or whether historians in the intervening centuries didn't have an axe to grind with Justinian and used the legend of a scandalous unpublished history as a convenient container for their own criticisms. Sort of "I'm not saying anything, but in the Anecdota, Procopius said that yadda yadda, keep in mind I'm just quoting him ... " I just feel like we're taking a lot on faith in thinking that it's actually Procopius's own work as opposed to a collection of tales by other people that were attributed to a book that everyone says was written but wasn't even actually seen. It's a super-cool story either way, but at the same time I know how gossip works, even among 14th century academics. 🙂
A _lot_ of Procopius survives. The whole of his major work, _The History of the Wars of Justinian,_ survives (five volumes in the Loeb edition - he is our major Greek historian of the sixth century) and his _Buildings of Justinian_ too, as well as the _Anecdota_ (each a single Loeb volume). And, yes, it is is recognizably Procopius who is writing.
@@johnleake5657 Thanks -- I wasn't sure if what survived was actually Procopius or just a collection of what other people quoted from it.
@@jcortese3300, so many ancient historians are in that condition, aren't they!
@@johnleake5657 I think a lot of them don't realize they should be in that condition. If I had a nickel for every historian of ancient Rome who takes as proven fact everything that some centurion scribbled on a latrine wall ...
This has all the finger prints of a Vatican forgery to delegitimize the Eastern Roman Empire at the start of the Middle Ages.
Very interesting - did not know about the plethora of "secret histories" launched by Procopius's work. Early precursor of today's tell-all celebrity bios ;-) Speaking of temporarily lost books, would you be willing to talk about De Rerum Natura? I have my book group reading The Swerve, and I think your viewers would find it interesting.
It's a fascinating phenomenon. And I'd love to do a video about De Rerum Natura - perhaps next time I acquire an interesting copy of it.
You're so knowledgeable it's really impressive
You tease re the wives lol...
I love your content and presentation.
I found your topic fascinating 😊
Having just glanced over the first chapter of said book, I can only laugh at your fear of the perceived salaciousness of its contents putting you at odds with youtube. It basically says she committed adultery.. a lot and had numerous lovers, taking pains to conceal it from her husband, and failing that trying to talk her way out of it using feminine charms. Hardly 50 shades of grey, or chatterlys lover. If anything given the roman obsession with debauchry it was downright restrained.
Great script! Would be a great film!
The TH-cam channel " static in the attic" has a great video about procopious and the global resets, worth watching if interested.
Your videos are the best Tom!!
Superb..
Having read Procopius' Secret History, I can't say I found the bulk of it unbelievable. Let's face it, occasionally, you encounter a Trajan - but for the most part, people who wield the kind of absolute power that Justinian and Theodora wielded are usually partially or totally corrupted by it. I know it's fashionable for historians to dismiss Procopius as unreliable, but aside from some of the most extreme charges - the accusations of being a demon, for example - I found nothing in the history that didn't sound like exactly what would happen if two imperfect rulers were given limitless power. The Secret History can be ugly and depressing but I see no reason why events couldn't have happened pretty much the way Procopius said they did.
Full and revised translation of Procopius in modern English without the expurgations would give a fascinating insight into who the Byzantines thought they were. Were they fully aware of the history of ancient Rome, did they see themselves as the same people, were they hide bound by their heritage. I wonder what the Italians thought of them? Long lost relatives or marauding interlooers?
Penguin Classics published a modern translation, by G.A. Williamson, in 1966. In the Introduction, the translator advises that Edward Gibbon provided his readers with the suppressed passage, but in Greek, with a Latin commentary, saying (with a certain degree of snark) that it "must be veiled in the obscurity of a learned language".
The standard edition of the Greek original is that of the German scholar Haury, published in Leipzig in 1913, but there is also the Loeb Classical Library edition, with facing pages in Greek and English, dating from 1935, published, as all the Loeb Classical Library, by Harvard University Press.
The way that I would die to spend a day with these books
These are one of my favorite book genres to this day…
Don't be fooled by the presenter's youthful appearance (he looks about 17!) But he's got the inside story on over 1000 years of the esoteric arcana of history. 🎓⭐
He wishes he has the inside story, but writers know their audience
These books are very interesting. I suppose some of those things written in there can't be taken at face value, Procopius probably had reasons to heavily dislike those people, but in all those books, there must be interesting historical events and facts in there, probably hidden by the official versions of history. And I'd bet there is hidden historical knowledge and books that the system has hidden from the public for different reasons throughout the times, and most of history we know of is mostly all altered and approved by the system of each era, and the differences to the actual events and true history could be massive. Even if not, all those books are still very interesting.
Thanks!
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed 🙏
Tom you have arrived, keep it up!
This makes me wish I could read Greek, and Latin.
The fact that there is no original manuscript dating at least from the 8th or 9th century makes me think that the Anecdota could be a 16th century hoax.
Also the only other channel I’ve heard ever discuss this piece of history is Asha Logos. So for any of the audience wanting further viewing on this check him out.
Extremely interesting.. There was also "the letters writ by a turkish spy"
What incredible history happened by circumstance. The impacts of which still bolster democracy
The thing people want is NOT secrets...it's TRUTH!
Thank you for the fascinating video, Mr. Ayling. Can you tell us if the unexpurgated version was ever published? Or was it destroyed?
Well done 👍
Because the parts about justinians wife were cut out of the latin print does that mean those sections are lost to time or are there still copies from before then?
It would be fascinating to analyze the consumption & approval statistics on "secret knowledge" books, in parallel... In the world I come from, secret histories, secret present, and secret plans for the future are all called conspiracy theories, but a vague handle on what some folks call "secret knowledge" is practically all it takes to understand the motivations and machinations behind bizarre and otherwise inexplicable events.
It's actually problematic, however, that even in fiction, the most popular subjects are generally the most grotesquely sensational. 🤔 In vetting secret histories, it's evidently enough for most folks to simply WANT something to be true. God forbid, irony intended, a famous, more virtuous, more talented person than themselves actually turn out to be anything other than a constructed sham. The public at large actually has a STRONG, SELF-INTERESTED motivation to reimagine onetime paragons of character as (curiously inversely-proportional 🤔) villains.
Bravo!
This is great, so interesting . Did you grow up surrounded by books?
Thank you! I grew up with regular trips to the library and am very lucky I did!
can you make a video on how to take care of books?
Wikileaks Classic!
Anybody have a clue why the first edition of the rediscovered 'Secret History' published in 1623 has numerous Stars of David on its spine @6:02 ?
Curious as to the symbolism here.
i was looking in the comments for the same question.. what did this symbol mean to these people?
Okay, so this Procopius fella 'published' 2 books that contradicted each other, basically one book is truthful and the other is not, and I have no idea which is which, but all I know is that I can't trust this fella, Procopius because he lied (by making false statements and/or claims) in one of those 2 books.
One was "discovered" centuries later, the other was public.
Who wants to hear about these wife's?
This is cool
1:56 The man's description, of Justinian, sounds like the man was tripping on drugs.
Asha Logos covered this in "our subverted history"
It turns out that there is a NOTHER Suda, a secret Suda, that says that the other Suda was a false work, and that there was indeed no extant manifest copy of the Alt history of Procopius.
Yessss… long form ! Yay
Can you do a video on Gabriel Garcia Marquez 100 years of solitude?
Good idea! Will try to when I next acquire an interesting example of it.
@@tomwayling Thank you. I ask as I am under the impression that the first edition - 1,2,3,4,5, printing were all paperback and no hard cover.
Omg, Aziraphale is on TH-cam now🤩
This makes me want to go find some geese and some barley grain!
You have chosen such an interesting career. It must be a calling....... I am so jelous lol 🙂
This channel is like crack to bibliophiles. Lol. Thank you so much for this content.
Would be intreesting to see the destroyed knowlege in the world greatest librarys like the vatacin ...alexandrea....and the Aztec library
David Drake and Eric Flint wrote a series of science fiction novels about Belisarius. I remember that they portrayed Procopius as a back biting little sh*t. Given The Secret History, I supposed they would have to. But it brings up the question of if anything in the Secret History was even true. Would the publication of the Secret History be the genesis for idea of writing conspiracy theories books?
It makes One wonder which "history" to believe, doesn't it. I must admit that DD/EF series was a very fun ride. I think I will go read it again.
I’m so lost what was the special secret history that the book was trying to covet? It just seems like it was a guy who talked a bunch of smack about two guys and their wives.
Maybe a movie can be made from this
I always thought of "Secret Histories" as a slander towards Justinian, since we have to take into account that Procopious was a Jew. And Justinian inacted laws that limited the many of the freedoms of the jewish community in the empire. Thus Procopious' work sounds like a typical jewish slander against a christian ruler that did them wrong.
i thought and considered the same idea.. the 'opposition' in a political sense we cant trust. just as the ruling power of the day by the way haha. who knows ..
@@be2the4out Well it's not necessary that we should not trust the opposition of a ruling power. But we have to take into account that history isn't a "clean coin" as we say here.
If anything we should always mark claims of historians as "possible but not certain" if there are no other ancient historians/texts confirming their claims. Procopious's Secret history is the sole source of Procopiou's claims. He starts the book by saying that what he writes in it will later be confirmed by others....yet no other historians or writers confirm the more exotic claims of Procopious. And there are like 3-4 other historians that have a record(big or small) of Justinian's rule. Malalas is one of thse that will have an extensive list of events during Justinian's rule. Now decent historians actually say that Malalas is probably using government propaganda as his source, but they also will say that Procopiou's claims could also be propaganda to smear Justinian.
To make things worse..."the secret history" was unknown up until the 16-th century, when it was discovered. And the only reason it is attributed to Procopious is that historians concluded that the text read as if it was written by Procopious(based on his earlier works). However we do have an account of another historian that lived during the time of Procopious, who was inspired by is works, so he also wrote in that style. So it's not hard to imagine that someone would mimic Procopiou's style.
It looks like Procopius was slighted by Justinian and criticized the emperor for that.
i know there is no real way of knowing but how would the original text have been preserved off the record for that long especially in ancient times? Was it just hidden in library collections and recopied over the years and was able to quietly survive?
Is this book available in the market??
Yes. For example University of Michigan Press has it.
Not my secret history. I only respect Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn: Secret History
Sorry but when some guy comes and says that what serious historical writer wrote about someone was, "unrepeatable," (even now,) then I simply refuse to take him or the channel remotely seriously.
That was when I lost interest.
me too.
Flammis ipse avis
Out of the flames
We/ourselves
Bird
=Pheonix😊
But what about the /Secret History of the Mongols/ (13th Century AD)?
Open Minds HUNGRY FOR ANSWERS❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
Keep asking QUESTIONS, QUESTION THE ANSWERS, and "FIND YOUR TRUTH"😊
Precopius was a man who had a BUNCH of sour Grapes.
Belisaurius was a great General.
Justinian was a great Emperor.
....in his reign, the greatest Christian Church in the world was built.
He survived the black death.
And he loved his wife.
Was he perfect?
No.
But he was Great.
"the greatest title is an honest king, but secret books are writ of no such thing"
I have a hardback advance reader's copy of Donna Tart's Secret History, it sold better. Rock on Justinian and Theodora.😂
But what does it say, what’s the skinny on Justinian?
Wht happened to the wives ?
It not a secret anymore but the empress was a prostitute before marrying the emperor.
Has this book been printed in English?
Oops should have listened to it all.