Gothic War (535–554)
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| Part of the renovatio imperii | |||||||||
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The Gothic War between the Byzantine Empire during the reign of Emperor Justinian I and the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy took place from 535 to 554 in the Italian peninsula, Dalmatia, Sardinia, Sicily, and Corsica. It was one of the last of the many Gothic wars against the Roman Empire. The war had its roots in the ambition of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I to recover the provinces of the former Western Roman Empire, which the Romans had lost to invading barbarian tribes in the previous century, during the Migration Period.
The war followed the Roman reconquest of the diocese of Africa from the Vandals. Historians commonly divide the war into two phases. The first phase lasts from 535 to the fall of the Ostrogothic capital Ravenna in 540, and the apparent reconquest of Italy by the Byzantines. The second phase from 540/541 to 553 featured a Gothic revival under Totila, which was suppressed only after a long struggle by the Roman general Narses, who also repelled an invasion in 554 by the Franks and Alamanni.
In 554, Justinian promulgated a pragmatic sanction that prescribed Italy's new government. Several cities in northern Italy held out against Constantinople until 562. By the end of the war, Italy had been devastated and depopulated. It was seen as a pyrrhic victory for the Eastern Romans, who found themselves incapable of resisting an invasion by the Lombards in 568, which resulted in Constantinople permanently losing control over large parts of the Italian peninsula.