Justinian I

Biography

A peasant's son from the Balkans who rose through the patronage of his uncle Justin, Justinian became the most ambitious of all late Roman emperors, driven by the dream of restoring the empire to its ancient Mediterranean glory — 'renovatio imperii.' From Constantinople he codified Roman law into the monumental Corpus Juris Civilis, built the great domed church of Hagia Sophia, and launched the wars to reconquer the lost West. He never left his capital, directing the reconquest through his generals Belisarius and Narses and financing it by taxing his eastern subjects to exhaustion. His reign saw Africa and Italy restored, but also the catastrophe of the Plague of Justinian, which killed perhaps a quarter of the empire's people, and the ruinous cost of endless war. He achieved a fleeting restoration of Roman power that his exhausted successors could not hold — but his law and his church shaped Europe for a thousand years.

Key Battles