that I may be looked upon as a romancer, and reckoned among
playwrights. However, I shall have the courage not to shrink from this
important work, because my story will not lack witnesses; for the men
of to-day, who are the best informed witnesses of these facts, will
hand on trustworthy testimony of their truth to posterity. Yet, when I
was about to undertake this work, another objection often presented
itself to my mind, and for a long time held me in suspense.

I doubted whether it would be right to hand down these events to
posterity; for the wickedest actions had better remain unknown to
future times than come to the ears of tyrants, and be imitated by
them. For most rulers are easily led by lack of knowledge into
imitating the evil deeds of their predecessors, and find it their
easiest plan to walk in the evil ways of their forefathers.

Later, however, I was urged to record these matters, by the reflection
that those who hereafter may wish to play the tyrant will clearly see,
in the first place, that it is probable that retribution will fall
upon them for the evil that they may do, seeing that this was what
befell these people; and, secondly, that their actions and habits of
life will be published abroad for all time, and therefore they will
perhaps be less ready to transgress. Who, among posterity, would have
known of the licentious life of Semiramis, or of the madness of
Sardanapalus or Nero, if no memorials of them had been left to us by
contemporary writers? The description of such things, too, will not be
entirely without value to such as hereafter may be so treated by
tyrants; for unhappy people are wont to console themselves by the
thought that they are not the only persons who have so suffered. For
these reasons, I shall first give a description of the evil wrought by
Belisarius, and afterwards I shall describe the misdeeds of Justinian