Apart from his own writings, the main source for Procopius's life was an entry in the "Suda", a Byzantine Greek encyclopaedia written sometime after 975, which discusses his early life. He was a native of Caesarea in the province of "Palaestina Prima". He would have received a conventional elite education in the Greek classics and rhetoric, perhaps at the famous school at Gaza. He may have attended law school, possibly at Berytus (present-day Beirut) or Constantinople (now Istanbul), and became a lawyer ("rhetor"). He evidently knew Latin, as was natural for a man with legal training. In 527, the first year of the reign of the emperor JustinianI, he became the legal adviser ("") for Belisarius, a general whom Justinian made his chief military commander in a great attempt to restore control over the lost western provinces of the empire.