JUSTINIAN AND THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE 131 through the day ; he was easy to see, she was very inaccessi- ble ; he merely touched his food and barely sipped his wine, she interrupted her slumbers to have a bath and breakfast and then went back to bed again, and "at dinner and at supper there was no sort of meat but she would have and that in abundance." The chief things that Justinian seems to have aimed to bring about were as follows: (1) to make the power of the emperor absolute; (2) to end the schism with the Policies of i Papacy and to maintain ecclesiastical unity and J ustinian orthodoxy; (3) to reconquer the lost possessions of the j Empire in the West and restore the ancient Roman Empire "to the limits of the two oceans"; (4) to insure the existing Empire from attack by skillful diplomacy with the barbari- ans, by constructing and repairing numerous fortifications in the Balkan peninsula and throughout the East, and by avoiding war with Persia and the barbarians as far as pos- sible; (5) to reform the imperial administration and secure good government; (6) to finish the work which Theodo- sius II had barely begun in his Code of 438, and to preserve the Roman law in a permanent and consistent form ; (7) to be a great builder like the emperors of old. Justinian made the position of the emperor even loftier than it had ever been before. He outdid Diocletian in the jluxury of his court, in the elaborateness of cere- His jmonial, and in the use of high-sounding titles. absolutlsm His state papers are couched in imperious and pretentious language. In his presence men had to prostrate themselves and kiss the imperial feet of the "Lord Justinian." Yet even the Secret History admits that he was very accessible, that jno man was ever denied an audience by him, and that he received every one courteously. Indeed, so many matters were taken over by the central government and so much more business than before was transacted at his court that it was always thronged. Like all the Byzantine emperors, however, Justinian had the turbulent populace of Constantinople to reckon with. •In 521, Justin spent the equivalent of over a million dol-
