The Challenges of the Later Sixth Century

Renewed war between Rome and Persia, and the emergence of the western Turkic tribes Khusro I, deposed by his general Bahram, seeks refuge with the Roman emperor Maurice

The eight years between the recall of Belisarius after the capture of Ravenna in 540 and his second withdrawal from Italy in 548 saw Roman hopes wither in the West. The situation was to be recovered at a military level by the campaigns of Belisarius’ successor, Narses, who eventually brought an end to the Gothic kingdom in the campaigns and battles of 552-3 (see pp. 423-4), but Italy itself, like Africa, was a wasteland in the middle years of the sixth century. All this

A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284-641, Second Edition. Stephen Mitchell. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Was starkly apparent to Procopius, writing at the beginning of the 550s and expressed in his uncompromising judgments on the whole program of Justini-anic reconquest. The decade of the 540s formed one of the major caesuras of Roman history. How should we assess the setbacks and disasters of these years?