Count Belisarius

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His name is mentioned, and his "ancient palace"/"sunken city" ruins—below a Mosque in Istanbul—are a playable level in Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb. a b c Dupuy, Trevor Nevitt (1977). A genius for war: the German army and general staff, 1807–1945. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0133511146. OCLC 3088892. Jones, Arnold Hugh Martin; Martindale, John Robert; Morris, J. (1971). The prosopography of the later Roman Empire, Volume 3, Part 1. University Press. p.183. ISBN 978-0521072335. The Roman empire had been permanently divided by Theodoric the Great in the 5th century, making official what had been in the offing for 100 years since Constantine the Great had established his capital of Constantinople on the Golden Horn, where he was closer to the troubled frontier along the Danube River. The capital of the west had been moved to Milan and then to Ravenna, which, being surrounded by swamps, was easier to defend and also closer to the eastern empire. In effect, the Roman empire had been split into two states. Only the eastern half was to survive as a political entity, for another 1,000 years, but in a form quite different from that in the west. The Eastern Romans, or Byzantines, spoke Greek and were Orthodox Christians, but they rightly saw themselves as the direct political descendants of the Western Roman state. By 536, Justinian had ruled for 18 years and regarded himself as the successor of Augustus, Marcus Aurelius and Constantine. As such, he meant to retake the west. Belisarius: Military Master of the West: Book One: Nika: historical novel by Peter Keating Vanguard Press (2021) – written from the view point of Belisarius as he recounts his life after being discharged from the service of Justinian—it paints a different portrait of the man loyal to his emperor, but under the sway of the two most powerful women, the Empress Theodora and his wife Antonina. This work covers his rise to prominence in the service of Justinian, his initial military campaigns in the East, then dealing with the Nika riot and finally becoming the first Roman to completely defeat the Vandals in North Africa and then capture Sicily.

Evans, James Allan (2003). The Empress Theodora: Partner of Justinian. University of Texas Press. p.52. ISBN 978-0-292-70270-7 . Retrieved 1 May 2011.Count Belisarius, which I have just re-read, describes the story of Belisarius, general to the Byzantine emperor Justinian. Hanson, Victor Davis. The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost. Bloomsbury Press, 2013. ISBN 978-1-6081-9163-5 online edition

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au av aw ax ay az ba bb Heather, P. J. (Peter J.) (2018). Rome resurgent: war and empire in the age of Justinian. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199362745. OCLC 1007044617. While the full conquest of Africa is often portrayed as the original objective of the campaign, it is unlikely this was actually the case. [13] Belisarius had the full authority to act in any way he saw fit. [13] Only when Belisarius was already in Sicily was the choice made to sail straight for the Vandal heartland. [13] If the Vandal fleet had been ready, such an operation would have been unlikely to succeed. [13] When information arrived in Constantinople it was already weeks, if not months, old, so it seems unlikely that Justinian in Constantinople would have made the decision on whether to move on the area at all. [13] Only at Sicily would one be in any kind of position to decide on how to proceed. [13] Edward Gibbon has much to say on Belisarius in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 41 online.Joseph von Bülow, Historical Sketches of Europe, Illustrating Important Events and Characteristic Traits of Celebrated Persons, Accompanied, Each of Them, by One of Nep. Geiger's Original Pen Drawings, Volume 2, the University of Wisconsin – Madison, 1860 One of the defining features of Belisarius' career was his success despite varying levels of available resources. His name is frequently given as one of the so-called " 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. Treadgold, Warren T. (1997). A history of the Byzantine state and society. Stanford University Press. p.246. ISBN 978-0-8047-2630-6 . Retrieved 12 October 2010.

The story is fun and pulpy, reaching a climax of downright addictive during Belisarius' initial conquests in Italy. The exasperated digressions on debates in current Christian theology, as told from the perspective of a reluctant convert who serves a false convert to Christianity, are hilarious. Graves' eye for historical detail and encyclopedic knowledge of his source material make the fictional world truly engrossing, and kept me happily reading. Following this disappointing campaign, mitigated by Belisarius' success in preventing the total destruction of Rome, in 548–49, Justinian relieved him. In 551, after economic recovery (from the effects of the plague) the eunuch Narses led a large army to bring the campaign to a successful conclusion; Belisarius retired from military affairs. At the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople (553), Belisarius was one of the Emperor's envoys to Pope Vigilius in their controversy over The Three Chapters. The Patriarch Eutychius, who presided over this council in place of Pope Vigilius, was the son of one of Belisarius' generals.The most interesting and well-drawn characters are actually their wives Antoninus and Theodora. A book offering their perspectives could have really flown. Instead I found myself skipping through the endless and over-described battles. a b c d Oman, Charles (2018). History of the Byzantine Empire: from the foundation to the fall of Constantinople. Madison & Adams Press. Belisarius tried to keep his strategic rear secure, besieging, for example, Auximus so he could safely move on Ravenna. When he saw fit, he sometimes did operate with a force in his strategic rear, like at the siege of Ariminum, or when he planned to move on Rome without having taken Naples. In the east, he understood that the Persian garrison of Nisibis would be afraid to give the battle a second time after being defeated in the open earlier. Here too, Belisarius operated with a force in his strategic rear. This section may contain irrelevant references to popular culture. Please remove the content or add citations to reliable and independent sources. ( May 2023)

Main article: Gothic War (535–554) Map of the operations of the first five years of the war, showing the Roman conquest of Italy under Belisarius Every other character, almost without exception, is quite repulsive and unlikable and all betray Belisarius in one way or another (Justinian, Theodora, and even his beloved Antonina). This is a tale of a tragic hero, whose very unbending moral goodness is seen as his only weakness in a world that is neither worthy of him nor appreciates him. His eventual, inevitable, final fall and death is suitably heart breaking and reads like something from a Greek tragedy. Belisarius won his first laurels as commander on the Mesopotamian front against the empire’s eastern neighbour and rival, Sāsānian Persia. He won a brilliant victory at Dara in 530, and, despite a subsequent defeat the following year at Sura (Callinicum), he emerged as the hero of the war by the time Justinian negotiated its end. Belisarius was in Constantinople, the capital, when the Nika Insurrection broke out there in January 532, and he further gained the emperor’s confidence by commanding the troops that ended the episode by massacring the rioters. About this time, meanwhile, Belisarius married the widowed Antonina, who, as an old friend to the empress Theodora, had influence at court that was later to be of great importance to him. Shahid, Irfan (1995). Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century. Dumbarton Oaks. p.78. ISBN 978-0-88402-214-5. The Archmagos Belisarius Cawl of Warhammer 40,000 also draws his namesake and inspiration from Belisarius.

Other books by Robert Graves

The Roman Empire was still the only world power. No other nation had the resources to assemble such a strike force. The logistics alone must have been a nightmare: 36,000 soldiers and sailors, some 6,000 horses, arms, engines, military stores, water and provisions to last for a three month voyage of over 1,000 miles. Despite Graves’s misgivings about the literary value of his novels, the essays in this section share the view that in his historical fiction Graves was able to work through and dramatize his distinctive ideas about the past. In “Homer’s Daughter: Graves’s Vera Historia ”, Sheila Murnaghan finds Graves in a mode both inquisitive and playful. In Homer’s Daughter, published in 1955, Graves reveals the author of the Odyssey to be a woman, staging “Nausicaa” as a princess whose Odyssean adventures prompt her spontaneous composition of the Homeric epic. In her engaging analysis of this “neat satire of the Odyssey ” (76), Murnaghan identifies in Graves’s Nausicaa the influence of Samuel Butler’s renegade thesis on the Odyssey ’s female authorship, as well as “an antitype of the tortured male poet” (71) of Graves’s speculative essay The White Goddess, published in 1948.