Justin I - Early Career

Early Career

Justin was a peasant and a swineherd by occupation from the Latinophone region of Dardania, which is part of the Diocese of Illyricum. He was born in a hamlet near Bederiana in Naissus (modern Niš, South Serbia). He was of Thraco-Roman stock, and bore, like his companions and members of his family (Zimarchus, Dityvistus, Boraides, Bigleniza, Sabatius, etc.) a Thracian name, and who never learned to speak more than rudimentary Greek. His sister Vigilantia (b. ca 455) married Sabbatius and had two children:Petrus Sabbatius Justinian I (b. 483) and Vigilantia (b. ca 490), married to Dulcissimus and had Praejecta (b. ca 520), married to the senator Areobindus and Justin II (b. ca 520).

As a teenager, he and two companions fled from a barbaric invasion, taking refuge in Constantinople possessing nothing more than the ragged clothes on their backs and a sack of bread between them. Justin soon joined the army and, because of his ability, rose through the ranks to become a general under the Emperor Anastasius I; by the time of Anastasius' death in 518, he held the influential position of comes excubitorum, commander of the palace guard.