# How does The Secret History develop the theme of Suffering of the Common People?

> The Secret History by Procopius

## Answer

The Secret History by Procopius develops Suffering of the Common People across the chapters the companion marks for this theme.

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.

## Evidence

- [iii-showing-the-danger-of-interfering-with-a-woman-s-intrigues-especially-when-the-woman-is-the-friend-of-an-empress](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_secret_history_se/chapters/iii-showing-the-danger-of-interfering-with-a-woman-s-intrigues-especially-when-the-woman-is-the-friend-of-an-empress.md): The senator Theodosius is tortured and driven mad; Photius suffers brutal treatment.
- [vii-outrages-of-the-blues](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_secret_history_se/chapters/vii-outrages-of-the-blues.md): Citizens live in constant fear, are robbed, killed, or forced into submission, with no hope of justice or redress.
- [xi-how-the-defender-of-the-faith-ruined-his-subjects](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_secret_history_se/chapters/xi-how-the-defender-of-the-faith-ruined-his-subjects.md): Massacres, forced conversions, loss of livelihoods, and mass emigration due to Justinian's policies.
- [xviii-how-justinian-killed-a-trillion-people](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_secret_history_se/chapters/xviii-how-justinian-killed-a-trillion-people.md): The chapter emphasizes the immense suffering and death of ordinary Romans, barbarians, and provincials due to war, famine, disease, and civil strife.
- [xix-how-he-seized-all-the-wealth-of-the-romans-and-threw-it-away-in-the-sea-and-on-the-barbarians](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_secret_history_se/chapters/xix-how-he-seized-all-the-wealth-of-the-romans-and-threw-it-away-in-the-sea-and-on-the-barbarians.md): Roman subjects are pillaged and their wealth given to barbarians, causing widespread suffering.
- [xxi-the-sky-tax-the-selling-of-all-offices-and-how-border-armies-were-forbidden-to-punish-invading-barbarians](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_secret_history_se/chapters/xxi-the-sky-tax-the-selling-of-all-offices-and-how-border-armies-were-forbidden-to-punish-invading-barbarians.md): Subjects were robbed by corrupt magistrates, enslaved by Huns, and even punished when they tried to rescue their families from barbarian raiders.
- [xxii-further-corruption-in-high-places](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_secret_history_se/chapters/xxii-further-corruption-in-high-places.md): Farmers forced to transport grain at great cost, poor deprived of dole, cities forced to buy inedible grain, and soldiers unpaid.
- [xxiii-how-landowners-were-ruined](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_secret_history_se/chapters/xxiii-how-landowners-were-ruined.md): Landowners flee, abandon property, or are crushed by multiple levies; farmers die of plague yet survivors pay deceased neighbors' taxes; soldiers quartered in homes.

## Links

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