Nearly all that is known about the career of the historian Procopius (c. 500–c. 560 CE) emerges from his own works. It is clear from these that he was born in Caesarea, Palestine (Caesarea in Palestine), and became a lawyer. The wealth of his family evidently ensured access to a traditional education in the classics, in the course of which he may have spent time in the nearby city of Gaza, whose rhetoricians – such as Procopius and Choricius of Gaza – were flou…