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Belisarius
6th-century Byzantine general
This article is about the general of the Byzantine Empire. For other uses, see Belisarius (disambiguation).
Belisarius (Latin pronunciation:[bɛ.lɪˈsaː.ri.ʊs]; Greek: Βελισάριος; c. 500 – March 565) was a military commander of the Byzantine Empire under Emperor Justinian I. Belisarius was instrumental in the reconquest of much of the Mediterranean territory belonging to the former Western Roman Empire, which had been lost less than a century prior. He has been suggested as one of the greatest military commanders in history and in Byzantium.
One of the defining features of Belisarius' career was his success despite varying levels of available resources. He is frequently cited as being among the "Last of the Romans". He conquered the Vandal Kingdom of North Africa in the Vandalic War in nine months and conquered much of Italy during the Gothic War. He also defeated the Vandal armies in the battle of Ad Decimum and played an important role at Tricamarum, compelling the Vandal king, Gelimer, to surrender. During the Gothic War, despite being significantly outnumbered, he and his troops recaptured the city of Rome and then held out against great odds during the siege of Rome.
After a setback at Thannurin, he won a battle against the Persians at Dara but was defeated at Callinicum. He successfully repulsed a Hunnic incursion at Melantias. He was also known for military deception; he repulsed a Persian invasion by deceiving their commander and lifted the siege of Ariminum without a fight.
Early life and career
Belisarius was born around the year 500, probably in Germania, a fortified town of which some archaeological remains still exist, on the site of present-day Sapareva Banya in south-west Bulgaria, within the borders of Thrace and Paeonia. He may have been born into an Illyro-Roman A Venetian Doge in a Yankee Court: Benjamin-Constant’s Murals of Venice and Byzantium in the Ames-Webster House, Boston by Christopher Carlsmith Fig. 1, Exterior of Ames-Webster House, 306 Dartmouth Street, Boston, Massachusetts, in 2013. Courtesy of Back Bay Houses, backbayhouses.org. Fig. 2, Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, The Justinian Cycle and The Venetian Cycle, 1889–90. Oil on canvas; John LaFarge, Guercino Aurora, 1882, stained glass skylight. Ames-Webster House, 306 Dartmouth Street, Boston, Massachusetts. Introduction Roman emperor from 527 to 565 AD "Justinian" redirects here. For the later emperor also called Justinian, see Justinian II. For other uses, see Justinian (disambiguation). Justinian I (Latin: Iustinianus, Ancient Greek: Ἰουστινιανός, romanized: Ioustinianós; 482 – 14 November 565), also known as Justinian the Great, was the Roman emperor from 527 to 565. His reign was marked by the ambitious but only partly realized renovatio imperii, or "restoration of the Empire". This ambition was expressed by the partial recovery of the territories of the defunct Western Roman Empire. His general, Belisarius, swiftly conquered the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa. Subsequently, Belisarius, Narses, and other generals conquered the Ostrogothic Kingdom, restoring Dalmatia, Sicily, Italy, and Rome to the empire after more than half a century of rule by the Ostrogoths. The praetorian prefect Liberius reclaimed the south of the Iberian Peninsula, establishing the province of Spania. These campaigns re-established Roman control over the western Mediterranean, increasing the Empire's annual revenue by over a million solidi. During his reign, Justinian also subdued the Tzani, a people on the east coast of the Black Sea that had never been under Roman rule before. He engaged the Sasanian Empire in the east during Kavad I's reign, and later again during Khosrow I's reign; this second conflict was partially initiated due to his ambitions in the west. Justinian is regarded as one of the most prominent and influential Roman emperors, and historians have often characterized him as a workaholic who worked tirelessly to expand the Byzantine Empire. One of the most enduring aspects of his legacy was the uniform rewriting of Roman law, the Corpus Juris Civilis, which was first applied throughout Continental Europe and is st .
Christopher Carlsmith is Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He was an Italian Fulbright scholar in 1996–97 and a Fellow at Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti Center for the Study of the Italian Renaissance in 2008–09. In Spring 2016, he will be a Fellow at the University of Bologna’s Institute for Advanced Study. Carlsmith has published A Renaissance Education: Schooling in Bergamo and the Venetian Republic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), and co-edited with Maria Mencaroni Zoppetti, Per una storia della cultura e della società a Bergamo. Indagini e percorsi nel Cinquecento e Seicento [Toward a Social and Cultural History of Bergamo: Investigations into the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries] (Bergamo: Sestante Edizioni, 2013). He is currently working on a study of Italian residential student colleges in early modern Bologna.
Email the author Christopher_Carlsmith[at]uml.edu
Among the dozens of elegant brownstones in Boston’s Back Bay, the Ames-Webster house at 306 Dartmouth Street stands out both for its stately exterior and rich interior, notable for a cycle of nineteenth-century mural paintings that depict historical figures from Renaissance Venice and Late Antique Byzantium (fig. 1). Completed in 1889–90 by the French artist Jean-Joseph Benjamin Justinian I