He didn't organize the empire completely by himself though. His great strength was as a manager. Those strong faces that surround him were the faces of a great team of men he picked together. And he didn't really care whether they were Roman patricians or from the humblest, roughest backgrounds. He himself actually come(s) from a completely illiterate peasant family in Serbia.

 

Justinian though, was only half the picture. The other half was that most remarkable woman over there, the Empress Theodora. They'd married each other for love and they stayed together for 25 years. And look at the young ladies of the court there. They're looking sideways and a bit nervous, since it's not proper for young girls to look straight at you, not unless you're a woman of power like Theodora. But that is actually a portrait the woman dying of cancer.

 

Within two or three months of this mosaic being finished, Theodora was dead. Justinian ruled for another 20 years, and never remarried and he went to her grave with a candle until he was a very old man.

 

Though Justinian and Theodora restored the Roman Empire, this was no longer that ancient classical world. They lived in a different age, spoke eastern Greek instead of Roman Latin and viewed the world in very different ways.

 

Look at these sculptures. They are probably the last classical figures ever made. They were made actually in the generations just before Justinian. Now, first glance, you might think they are just powers of those usual classical things you see hanging around museums, big stony Alexanders and Caesars all strutting their stuff.

 

But they are not like that at all. They're new, they're different. Something else is going odd. It's very simple work, very realistic in a way. Little light cut lines, and a day old beard lightly chiseled on the hard marble as if to emphasize its transience, its insubstantiality.

 

These people look pensive, sad, and rather wise. After all, having the saints and bishops told them that this life, this material world, was only an illusion, so naturally these statues don't strut their stony stuff like Alexander or the emperors of Rome. They are not heroic descriptions of skin and bone and straining muscle.