The defining verbal representation of Justinian’s bronze horseman was created by Prokopios. His Buildings (I.ii, I.x.5) is a multivalent text, which deserves both a greater consideration and a historiographic rehabilitation. While on the surface Buildings appears to flatter the emperor, I argue that the deeper narrative reveals strong elements of figured speech and safe criticism. Buildings is ekphrastic in certain aspects of form, but not in overall substance. Formal conformity with the genre constitutes a veil for criticism. Focusing on a close analysis of his representation of Justinian’s equestrian monument, I argue that Prokopios indicts Justinian on the charges of gigantomania and obliteration of the past. The bronze horseman features twice in Buildings – within the otherwise coherent cluster of Justinian’s church-building, and as the headlining sculpture in the section dedicated to Constantinople’s non-ecclesiastical monuments. This exceptional return to the bronze horseman is thus both notable and deliberate. The equestrian monument is the only sculptural monument of Buildings that merited a substantive description beyond a list-like entry.

Justinian turned the greatest domestic challenge of his reign (the Nika riots) into a spectacular opportunity for promoting his gloria. He constructed the last imperial forum in Constantinople on the ruins and foundations of the old Augoustaion. Hagia Sophia was the first major element of the new vision to be constructed (532–37 CE), while the triumphal column was the last (ca. 543 CE). No ruler in the premodern era would surpass Justinian’s spectacular accomplishments of either Hagia Sophia or the triumphal column. Justinian deliberately appropriated a colossal equestrian sculpture from the forum of Theodosios. While rulers before him commissioned great equestrian monuments, only he chose to place an equestrian monument at the top of a triumphal column. Like the colossal statues of his predecessors, Constantine and Theodosios, the equestrian Justinian also faced east. The bronze horseman came to command the city’s skyline and define the image of Constantinople. This awesome statement of power became a towering reminder of Justinian and his seemingly boundless might.