much ruin was caused by earthquakes, pestilences and inundations of
rivers, as I shall immediately tell you. Thus it was not by mere human
power, but by something greater, that they were enabled to work their
evil will.

It is said that Justinian's mother told some of her intimates that
Justinian was not the son of Sabbatius, her husband, or of any human
being; but that, at the time when she became pregnant, an unseen demon
companied with her, whom she only felt as when a man has connection
with a woman, and who then vanished away as in a dream.

Some who have been in Justinian's company in the palace very late at
night, men with a clear conscience, have thought that in his place
they have beheld a strange and devilish form. One of them said that
Justinian suddenly arose from his royal throne and walked about
(although, indeed, he never could sit still for long), and that at
that moment his head disappeared, while the rest of his body still
seemed to move to and fro. The man who beheld this stood trembling and
troubled in mind, not knowing how to believe his eyes. Afterwards the
head joined the body again, and united itself to the parts from which
it had so strangely been severed.

Another declared that he stood beside Justinian as he sat, and of a
sudden his face turned into a shapeless mass of flesh, without either
eyebrows or eyes in their proper places, or anything else which makes
a man recognisable; but after a while he saw the form of his face come
back again. What I write here I did not see myself, but I heard it
told by men who were positive that they had seen it.

They say, too, that a certain monk, highly in favour with God, was