# What Suffering of the Common People means in The Secret History

> The text repeatedly emphasizes the immense hardship inflicted on ordinary citizens, soldiers, and the poor through excessive taxation, monopolies, military neglect, and violent factionalism.

## Explanation

The text repeatedly emphasizes the immense hardship inflicted on ordinary citizens, soldiers, and the poor through excessive taxation, monopolies, military neglect, and violent factionalism.

The senator Theodosius is tortured and driven mad; Photius suffers brutal treatment.

Citizens live in constant fear, are robbed, killed, or forced into submission, with no hope of justice or redress.

Massacres, forced conversions, loss of livelihoods, and mass emigration due to Justinian's policies.

The chapter emphasizes the immense suffering and death of ordinary Romans, barbarians, and provincials due to war, famine, disease, and civil strife.

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