The Gothic War and Byzantine reconquest of Italy

Date

535 to 554 CE

Category

Military & conflict

Region

Italy

Era

Post-Classical / Medieval

Significance

Launched in 535, Justinian's Gothic War aimed to recover Italy from the Ostrogothic kingdom established by Theodoric. Belisarius took Sicily, Naples and Rome and captured Ravenna in 540, but a Gothic revival under King Totila reversed many gains, and Rome changed hands repeatedly.

Only after Justinian sent the general Narses with a large army was the resistance crushed at the battles of Taginae (552) and Mons Lactarius (553), with mopping-up continuing to 554. The nearly twenty-year struggle nominally restored imperial rule over the Italian peninsula but devastated it: cities were besieged and depopulated, the aqueducts and senatorial economy of Rome collapsed, and the city's population fell drastically. The exhaustion of Italy left it poorly defended, and within a generation the Lombards overran much of the peninsula. Combined with plague and the war's enormous cost, the Gothic War is often seen as a Pyrrhic triumph that hastened the end of classical urban civilisation in Italy.

Empires active in 535 to 554 CE

• Sassanid Empire
  224 CE to 651 CE
• Kingdom of Funan
  50 CE to 550 CE
• Byzantine Empire
  330 CE to 1453 CE
• Kingdom of Aksum
  100 CE to 940 CE
• Hephthalite Empire
  440 CE to 560 CE
• Classic Maya Civilization
  250 CE to 900 CE

Related military & conflict events

• The Lombards invade Italy
  568 CE
• Battle of the Yarmuk ends Byzantine rule in Syria
  August 636 CE
• Belisarius destroys the Vandal Kingdom of North Africa
  533 to 534 CE
• Calakmul's coalition defeats Tikal in a 'star war', beginning the Tikal Hiatus
  April 562 CE
• Sasanian conquest of Jerusalem and capture of the True Cross
  614 CE
• The An Lushan Rebellion devastates Tang China
  755 to 763 CE

Essential reading

• Volcanic Winter of 536 and Onset of the Late Antique Little Ice Age
  536 to 537 CE
• Official Introduction of Buddhism to Japan
  552 CE (traditional date; 538 CE in some sources)
• Brahmagupta codifies zero and arithmetic of negatives (Brahmasphutasiddhanta)
  628 CE
• Antonine Plague
  165-180 CE

Further reading

Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire

The wider story

Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire

Judith Herrin

Vivid, thematic popular history by a top Byzantinist.

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