The Bismarck Myth: Weimar Germany and the Legacy of the Iron Chancellor Book

The story of Justinian is one that I have just recently been introduced to. I took a class about the Byzantine Empire at university, and having known vaguely about him prior to the course I was intrigued. Having learned a little more I was curious to find out more, and stumbled on his book. While it is certainly good, Evans comes out at the very beginning and says that this is by no means a definitive biography on him - which I would agree with.

I found the origins of Justin who was a poor peasant and eventually became emperor to be a very interesting story, where he then adopts his nephew Justinian (Sabbatius Petrus) and has him become consul. It is quite interesting to see though that many records in byzantine history almost completely ignored Justin, including procopius who did not seem to like him very much as he found him to be uneducated and turned his nose down to him.

The layout of the book is a little bizarre in my opinion as it kind of jumps around and doesn't seem very focused. It starts with Justin becoming emperor and then talks about Anastasius and Zeno and Leo and a few other things and then only talking about Justin and Justinians origins about 100 pages later, which sucked.

The book is relatively good after that point where it seems to keep to a chronological pace and talks about the Niko Revolt which I loved, and Justinians attempt to take back the Imperial dominions starting with North Africa under Belisarius which I enjoyed.

All in all the book is pretty good,I found the layout of it rather annoying and a bit jarring which detracted from my pleasure of it, but all in all not too bad.