Well, he really really hated them. The them in question being the Emperor Justinian and his wife, the Empress Theodora, rulers of the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century, with left over bile poured out upon the emperor’s chief general, Belisarius. The writer, Procopius, was a high-ranking Byzantine civil servant who worked first with Belisarius and then with the Emperor and his wife. He knew the people he wrote about and, apparently, came to loathe them with an overweening passion.

I don’t think there’s been a literary revenge more vicious than the history that Procopius wrote knowing that it would only be published after his death. It had to be published after he died as seeing it into publication personally would have ensured a very short and painful period before he did die.

Historically, Justinian is seen as the man who restored the Roman empire to something like its former glory and Belisarius was the general who accomplished this reconquest at the emperor’s behest. But according to Procopius, both men were hen-pecked cowards, completely dominated by their sex-obsessed wives, who cuckolded emperor and general with impunity and competed in contests to see who could sleep with more men.

If it reads like some sort of fever dream, particularly when compared with the actual accomplishments of Justinian and Theodora, then that’s because it must be: no one as incompetent as the Justinian portrayed in the Secret History could have done what the historical Justinian did. But then the question arises as to why Procopius hated them so. And the answer is that we don’t know. Scholars have proposed various answers but none are completely convincing.

Given the viciousness with which Procopius treats Theodora, and Belisarius’s wife Antonina, he seems to have despised women. But then, he claims Justinian was possessed by demons.

Really, he just hated them. If nothing else, this illustrates the maxim, never get too close to your heroes. Perhaps the best explanation is that Procopius entered their service as one dazzled and entranced, and left it as one disillusioned and filled with bile – a bile he poured into his Secret History. There really is nothing else like it.