Justin was not strong enough to do his subjects either good or harm; he was utterly simple, a very poor speaker, and a complete boor.

Justinian was his sister's son, who, when quite a young man, practically governed the State, and brought more woe upon the Romans than anyone we have ever heard of before.

He was ever ready to commit unrighteous murders and rob men of their estates, and thought nothing of making away with tens of thousands of men who had given him no cause for doing so.

He had no respect for established institutions, but loved innovations in everything, and was, in short, the greatest destroyer of all the best of his country's institutions.

As for the plague, of which I have made mention in the former books of my history, although it ravaged the whole earth, yet as many men escaped it as perished by it, some of them never taking the contagion, and others recovering from it.