HKB
When Justinian came to the throne, he straightway succeeded in upsetting everything. What had previously been forbidden by the laws he introduced, while he abolished all existing institutions, as though he had assumed the imperial robe for no other purpose than to alter completely the form of government. He did away with existing offices, and established other new ones for the management of affairs. He acted in the same manner in regard to the laws and the army; not that he was led to do so by any love of justice or the public advantage, but merely in order that all institutions might be new and might bear his name; if there was any institution that he was unable to abolish at once, he gave it his name, that at least it might appear new. He could never satisfy his insatiable desire, either of money or blood; but after he had plundered one wealthy house, he would seek for another to rob, and straightway squander the plunder upon subsidies to barbarians, or senseless extravagance in building. After he had destroyed his victims by tens of thousands, he immediately began to lay plots against even greater numbers. As the Roman Empire was at peace with foreign nations, his impatience of quiet led him, out of uncontrollable love of bloodshed, to set the barbarians fighting with one another. Sending for the chieftains of the Huns for no reason whatever, he took a pride in lavishing great sums of money upon them, under the pretext of securing their friendship, just as he did in the time of the Emperor Justin, as I have already told you. These Huns, when they had got the money, sent to some of their fellow-chieftains with their retainers, and bade them make inroads into the Emperor's territory, that they also might make a bargain with him for the peace which he was so ready to purchase. These men straightway subjugated the Empire, and nevertheless remained in the Emperor's pay; and, following their examples, others straightway began to harass the wretched Romans, and, after they had secured their booty, were graciously rewarded by the Emperor for their invasion. Thus the whole Hunnish nation, one tribe after another, never ceased at any time to lay waste and plunder the Empire; for these barbarians are under several independent chieftains, and the war, having once begun through his foolish generosity, never came to an end, but always kept beginning anew; so that, during this time, there was no mountain, no cave, no spot whatever in the Roman Empire that remained unravaged, and many countries were harried and plundered by the enemy more than five several times.
These calamities, and those which were brought upon the Empire by the Medes, the Saracens, the Sclavonians, the Antes, and other barbarians, I have described in the previous books of my history; but, as I have said at the beginning of this story, I was here obliged to explain the causes which led thereto.
Justinian paid Chosroes many centenars in order to secure peace, and then, with unreasonable arbitrariness, did more than anyone to break the truce, by employing every effort to bring Alamundur and his Huns over to his own side, as I have already set forth in plain terms in my history.