Historical fiction was, it seems, his prefferred method for acquiring a picture of the past. As I searched for suggestions I discovered that there is preciouse little one could recommend. Here is a list of my discoveries so far. Historical fiction varies in quality from anchronistic potboilers to beautifully written and well-researched works of literature. Although Greek and Roman antiquity has been the setting fro a huge number of such works, with Mary Renault in English and Marguerite Yourcenar in French among the best practitioners, late antiquity and Byzantium have fared less well.
Graves narrates the life of perhaps the most glamourous Byzantine general.
Given Graves gripping view of the early Empire in I, Claudius and Claudius the God, the availability of Procopius as a source, and the dramatic events and personalities of Belasarius's career, it is hard to see how Graves could have failed. Most readers though seem to find the novel pedestrian and, frankly, boring. Kraus, Rene, 1902-1947, Theodora, the circus empress, translated from the German by June Head. A modern novel about an Anglican Feminist mission to Eastern Turkey with the intention of liberating Muslim women by converting them to Anglicanism. It is a camp classic.