Belisarius

Belisarius (born c. 505, Germania, Illyria?—died March 565) was a Byzantine general, the leading military figure in the age of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I (527–565). As one of the last important figures in the Roman military tradition, he led imperial armies against the Sāsānian empire (Persia), the Vandal kingdom of North Africa, the Ostrogothic regime of Italy, and the barbarian tribes encroaching upon Constantinople (Istanbul).

Little is known of Belisarius’s early years. Some traditions assign him an unlikely Slavic background, but his exact origins and the precise date of his birth are undocumented. As a member of Justinian’s bodyguard, he came to the emperor’s attention, and he was appointed to a command at about the age of 25. His public career thereafter is thoroughly described by the historian Procopius, who was a member of his personal staff for the first 15 years of his campaigns and who observed the general’s activities personally.

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.

Justinian next chose Belisarius to begin the reconquest of the western Roman territories occupied by Germanic peoples. In 533 he was sent with a small force to attack the Vandals in North Africa. In two stunning victories he shattered the Vandal kingdom within a few months. Returning to Constantinople, he was granted a triumphal celebration. The recovery of Italy from the Ostrogoths began in 535. Belisarius quickly took Sicily and moved steadily northward on the mainland, seizing Naples by storm and occupying Rome. Revitalized under their new king, Witigis, the Goths besieged Rome in 537–538, but Belisarius held out there brilliantly. Hampered by conflicts within his command, his advance further northward was delayed, but by 540 the Goths, hard-pressed, offered to surrender if Belisarius would rule over them as emperor. Justinian had already come to fear that so popular a commander might win sufficient prestige to aim at his throne. Dissembling, Belisarius accepted the Goths’ capitulation and then refused the title, which would have proved dangerous, thus antagonizing the Goths without relieving Justinian’s suspicions.

The emperor recalled him from Italy in temporary disfavour but sent him in the following year to fight again in Mesopotamia against the Sāsānians. Despite some successes, Belisarius had difficulties with his unruly soldiers, and then he was stripped of his command on charges of disloyalty. Only Theodora’s intervention, out of friendship for Antonina, relieved his disgrace and ruin. Imperial rule had broken down in Italy under Belisarius’s incompetent successors. He was reassigned there in 544, but Justinian, more suspicious and niggardly than ever, would not back him with sufficient men and money. Belisarius operated insecurely around the Italian coasts for the next few years, even briefly holding Rome once more, but effective opposition to the Ostrogoths was impossible. Theodora died in 548, and he was soon recalled. The Italian wars were left to be completed by other generals, notably the eunuch Narses, who would receive Justinian’s fuller support.

Returning to Constantinople, Belisarius was allowed to retain his wealth and large household bodyguard. When marauding Hun tribes menaced the city in 559, the emperor summoned Belisarius back into service. Adding what men he could find to his private retinue, he frightened the Huns away by clever stratagems and then resumed his retirement. Three years later he was accused of involvement in a plot against Justinian’s life and, though probably innocent, was disgraced. Partially restored to favour in 563, he was left in peace until his death, a few months before the death of the ungrateful emperor he had served so well.

Belisarius’s character is elusive. Two primary impulses guided his life: loyalty to Justinian and passion for his wife, Antonina. Despite the treatment he often received from Justinian, Belisarius never wavered in his obedience, contributing one of the nobler dimensions to Justinian’s era. Antonina seems to have utterly captivated him, but her reckless and immoral behaviour brought him embarrassment and humiliation.

In Procopius’s Secret History (Historia arcana), Belisarius is given the least unfavourable treatment of the age’s leading personalities. His reputation endured for centuries, and later legends, often mixed with stories about others, developed about him. The most famous had him actually blinded by Justinian and forced to beg in the streets in his old age. The 18th-century French writer Jean-François Marmontel used the story of Belisarius as a vehicle for an oblique attack on Louis XV and for a plea for tolerance and justice, in his philosophical novel Bélisaire (1767). Robert Graves’s vivid novel Count Belisarius (1938) is the best fictionalized treatment of the general’s life.