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The Gothic War and Byzantine reconquest of Italy

535–554 CE·Military & conflict·Italy·
535–554 CEDate
Military & conflictCategory
12Empires active
Date
535–554 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.

See the world map in 535–554 CE →More military & conflictThe Post-Classical / Medieval era

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Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire

Judith Herrin

Vivid, thematic popular history by a top Byzantinist.

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