Culture Passport

Renovatio Imperii Romanorum 

The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 CE; or rather it went out without a whimper when the teenage emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by a Germanic warlord named Odoacer who was already effectively in control of Italy. His deposition and the proclamation of a Germanic kingdom in Italy was more of a formality than anything else by that time. The idea of reviving the Roman Empire to its former grandeur, though, would remain. This was a concept which people in the Latin-speaking world called Renovatio Imperii Romanorum, transliterating as ‘The Restoration of the Roman Empire’. Different versions of it followed over the centuries. Charlemagne, the great emperor of the Frankish empire, was crowned as King of the Romans by the Pope in the year 800 and an entity called the Holy Roman Empire existed in Germany down to 1806. Even the Ottoman Turks referred to their empire as the Sultanate of Rum or Rome until it collapsed at the end of the First World War. But these were all vague iterations of the proposed restoration. There was really only one version of the Renovatio Imperii Romanorum which came close to restoring the Roman Empire. This occurred during the sixth century CE when the Emperor Justinian, ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire, which was still alive and well, sent expeditions to the Western Mediterranean to re-conquer the lost provinces. Incredibly, he met with enormous success and by the mid 550s CE much of North Africa, Italy and southern Spain had been reclaimed for Rome. This is the story of the ruler who dared to try and rebuild the Roman Empire. 

Justinian  

Justinian was born in 482 CE, six years after the Western Roman Empire ceased to exist. He was not born at Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, but instead hailed from a peasant family in northern Macedonia. The most important figure in his early life was his uncle Justin, a military man who rose through the ranks to become a senior figure within the imperial guard in the capital. He then adopted Justinian and had him brought to Constantinople.

There he was afforded a good education and learned rhetoric, philosophy, history and Latin. He appears to have been the last emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire to speak Latin fluently. Things changed again in 518 CE, by which time Justinian was a man in his mid-thirties. The emperor, Anastasius I Dicorus, died that year and Justin outflanked several rivals to claim the imperial throne for himself. With this, Justinian suddenly found himself as heir to the empire, a peculiar ascent for the son of a peasant from rural Macedonia. Nine years later, in 527 CE, after a relatively successful reign in which he sought stability and to curb the growth of heretical Christian sects, Justin died. Thus, at around 45 years of age, Justinian ascended as Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. 

The Byzantine Empire in the Early Sixth Century  

The empire that Justinian ascended to the throne of in 527 CE was one that few observers a few centuries earlier could have predicted the emergence of. It was essentially a portion of the Roman Empire, but Rome and Italy now lay under the controls of Germanic tribes like the Ostrogoths. This was the outcome of a process in the fourth century CE whereby the empire had split in two, with the Western Roman Empire ruling over Western Europe and much of the Maghreb from Italy and being a Latin-speaking entity, while the Eastern Roman Empire was ruled from the city of Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul on the doorway between the Balkans and Asia Minor.

It was a Greek-speaking empire and culturally distinct from its western counterpart. Soon the two sides had turned to fighting against each other, with the emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire deliberately encouraging the Germanic tribes that were attacking its settlements in the Balkans to head further west to attack places like Italy and Gaul. The end result of all of this was that in the fifth century the provinces of the Western Roman Empire had been completely overrun and in 476 CE the last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, as we have seen, was deposed. The Eastern Roman Empire, which from this point onwards is more typically referred to as the Byzantine Empire, although that is not a name that was used at the time, continued to hold control over the Balkans, Asia Minor or Turkey, much of the Levant and Egypt and Libya in North Africa. However, it faced pressure on all sides. There were continuing incursions into the Balkans, though now these were in the shape of the first waves of Slavic tribes. In the east the Sassanid Empire of Persia was a constant threat, while the Vandal Kingdom that had been established in North Africa had surprisingly become a substantial naval power, one capable of threatening Byzantine shipping in the central parts of the Mediterranean Sea. It was this dubious situation which Justinian inherited in 527 CE. 

Nika Riots 

Justinian’s would be an active and busy reign. It was often troubled at the same time, a fact which makes his achievements all the greater. A sign of this instability was seen early on in an event known as the Nika Riots. Chariot-racing was the most popular sport in Constantinople at the time and fans were so avid that they had formed into groups supporting teams identified by their colours. Often this support could boil over into violence between fans of the different teams. In the first years of Justinian’s reign, there was growing conflict between the blues and the greens, leading to several deaths during a wave of street violence in 531 CE. The following January these spilled over into city-wide rioting after some of those involved in the murders the previous year were condemned to death. Rival gangs of the greens and blues began rioting and attacking buildings across the city. Some of this was quite organised and there was a watchword, ‘Nika’, used to signal the commencement of the attacks, with even a loose plan to replace Justinian as emperor with a cousin of Emperor Anastasius, who had died 14 years earlier. In the event, the political conspiracy failed and the imperial guard eventually managed to reimpose order, but it came after several days of intense violence. An ancient account suggests tens of thousands of people were dead by the end of the Nika Riots. This is almost certainly an exaggeration, but perhaps thousands were killed and wounded in a sign of how volatile the politics of a city like Constantinople could be. 

War with Persia 

Civil disorder in his capital was not the only issue which Justinian had to contend with. He also had an enemy harrying his eastern border. In the third century the Sassanid Persians had emerged as a successor to the Parthian Empire in Persia and Mesopotamia. When he ascended, they were in the process of trying to claim a wide range of lands around the Levant and the Dead Sea into northern Arabia. He had little choice in the first years of his reign but to commit extensive resources to fighting them around the Negev and Syrian Deserts. A number of important strategic victories were won and Justinian eventually agreed to what was termed the Eternal Peace in 531 CE. It was an expensive one. Justinian bought off the Persians with a bribe of thousands of pounds of gold, the raising of which through increased taxation was part of the reason for the Nika Riots in Constantinople the following year. He was happy to pay the money though, for now he could turn his attention to his true goal: the re-conquest of the western provinces. 

Conquering the Vandals 

Justinian’s first target in the west was the Kingdom of the Vandals. The Vandals were one of the Germanic and Asiatic tribes that had swept through the empire and demolished the western part of it in the fifth century. Their story was particularly strange. Having conquered parts of Hispania, they eventually acquired a fleet and sailed to North Africa, where they conquered modern-day Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia in the late 420s and 430s CE. Now Justinian despatched a large army under his foremost general, Belisarius, to Tunisia in 533 CE. The force consisted of some 15,000 men on hundreds of ships, with thousands of more mariners and auxiliaries.

What followed was a campaign of bewildering success. After landing at Ras Kaboudia, Belisarius and his forces advanced on the city of Carthage, the ancient name for Tunis and quickly seized it. The last Vandal king, Gelimer, was taken prisoner and sent to Constantinople as Justinian’s prisoner, while Belisarius followed up by seizing the islands of Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearic Islands with relative ease. He even carved out a landing site in Hispania by securing the region around the Rock of Gibraltar, while his forces fanned out along the coastline of North Africa. In the space of a campaign of just 18 months, Belisarius had reclaimed a substantial proportion of what had been the Western Roman Empire. 

Italy Reclaimed 

The next stage of the re-conquest would be more difficult. Belisarius invaded Sicily from North Africa in 535 CE, the goal being to wrest control of the entire peninsula from the Ostrogoths and other Germanic people who had settled there over the previous century or so. The initial steps in this campaign were as successful as in North Africa. He quickly occupied Sicily and then crossed over to southern Italy, marching all the way up the coast to take Naples before entering Rome in December 536 CE. While this was clearly a momentous occasion, it was not quite the victory it seemed. While the Eternal City still had a great symbolic value, for centuries, even before the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the centre of political and economic power in Italy had been in the cities of Ravenna and Milan much further to the north. Belisarius needed to take these if he was to fully defeat the Ostrogoths. A much slower campaign followed into the late 530s CE. He did so by the early 540s CE, but no sooner had he claimed one prize than another fell. Rome was recaptured by an Ostogothic force and actually switched hands between Justinian’s armies and the Ostrogoths several times over the next decade. Other forces from north of the Alps soon became involved as well, complicating the entire war. Ultimately Belisarius would never manage to fully pacify Italy, though a Byzantine presence would persist here, particularly in the south, for centuries to come. The re-conquest of Hispania was also furthered during these years with the acquisition of a number of important cities along the Mediterranean coast like Cartagena. 

The Plague of Justinian and the Volcanic Winter 

What was most impressive about this revitalisation of the Roman Empire in the Western Mediterranean was that it came during a period that historians have recently somewhat sensationally tried to characterise as the worst period to be alive in human history. It certainly was no picnic! Around the year 536 CE there were one or possibly more enormous volcanic eruptions in the world. The culprit has yet to be conclusively identified, but Krakatoa in what is now Indonesia, which famously erupted again in 1883, is a possible candidate. Another theory is that one of Iceland’s volcanoes erupted at this time or possibly a major volcano in Central America. One must have done so, for we find written accounts from all over Europe at this time describing the sky turning black for weeks and even months, the temperature plummeting and crops failing all over the continent. Ironically this would have implications for the Byzantines nine centuries later, as it was probably this volcanic winter in the mid-sixth century CE which set off the Turkish migrations from Siberia towards Central Asia as they sought to escape the falling temperatures in what was already a cold part of the world. One branch of these Turks would conquer the Byzantine Empire on the other side of Eurasia in 1453. No sooner was the Byzantine Empire beginning to recover from this volcanic winter in 536 CE, but a wave of the bubonic plague arrived to the Mediterranean around 541 CE. It was nearly as deadly as the Black Death wave eight centuries later, perhaps killing as many as 30 to 40 million people across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, many of them within Justinian’s dominions. It colloquially became known as the Plague of Justinian, a common occurrence whereby plagues were named after the ruling emperor. Finally, in 551 CE an earthquake struck around where Beirut is today in the Lebanon. Based on written accounts, some scientific historians argue that this might have been as violent as a 7.5 magnitude earthquake. It set off a tsunami in the Eastern Mediterranean and killed thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of people, in the lands along the shore of the Levant. 

Art and Architecture 

Justinian is also notable for his patronage of the arts, architecture and learning. Three of the leading historians of the early medieval period worked in and around his court, these being Procopius, Cassiodorus and Jordanes.

Procopius’ Secret History is one of the best sources for the events of the fifth and sixth centuries CE in the Mediterranean world, while Jordanes wrote a book called the Getica which has greatly informed our understanding of the Goths and many of the other Germanic tribes that toppled the Western Roman Empire in late antiquity. Far to the west, Justinian financed the completion of the building of the Basilica of San Vitale at Ravenna in northern Italy. There are some famous mosaics there depicting Justinian and his wife Theodora which attest to his patronage. The church and the mosaics are a UNESCO World Heritage Site today. But all of these stand in the shadow of Justinian’s decision to build two great new churches in Constantinople. These were to be dedicated to Saint Irene and to Holy Wisdom. The latter is the greater. They are known today as Hagia Irene and Hagia Sophia. Hagia Sophia is one of the foremost landmarks in Istanbul. While it is a mosque today, and the iconic minaret towers that surround it were a later addition in Ottoman times, the building was actually built on Justinian’s orders in the sixth century. 

The Code of Justinian 

Justinian would probably have earned his place as one of the Byzantine Empire’s most successful rulers alone through his building work and his efforts to re-conquer the western provinces, but there was one more element to his reign which in its own way has proved to be the most consequential of all. Shortly after he had ascended to the throne in 527 CE, the emperor had ordered his court scholars and legists to begin compiling and systematising the thousands of laws which had been proclaimed over hundreds of years of Roman history. There was no compendium of these, nor was there a complete Roman constitution of any kind to give definitive character to the Roman political and legal system. He now ordered his legists to begin systematically assembling all the available information into a law code. The result, after many years of work, was the Corpus Juris Civilis, a compendium of such laws, as well as a Digest and set of Institutes which aided understanding of the enormous collection.

These documents have become the foundation of what we call the civil law, the legal system which has been directly handed down to the modern world from the law of the Romans. Had Justinian not ordered the creation of a complete compendium of these laws, many would have been lost to us and the civil law would not be as complete a legal code as it is. It still influences our lives today. Many rulings which will be encountered to varying degrees in different countries are variations of Roman law. Hence, the compilation of the Law Code of Justinian is in many ways his most enduring legacy.  

Later Reign and Death 

By comparison with the events of the first half of his reign, the latter years of Justinian’s time as emperor were less colourful. After the Beirut Earthquake of 551 CE there were few crises, while the active policy of conquest in the west was stopped in favour of attempting to hold what had been acquired in the 530s and 540s. At home in Constantinople the aging emperor had to see to the succession. He had no legitimate children and instead chose to adopt his sister Vigilantia’s son, Justin. He was serving in a senior position at the imperial court by 553 CE and was clearly being trained for the succession. So it was that when Justinian died on the 14th of November 565, he was succeeded by his nephew as Emperor Justin II. Justinian was 83 years of age at the time of his passing, very old by the standards of the time. 

The Decline of the Byzantine Empire 

Despite the difficulties he had faced, Justinian had accomplished a significant amount during his long reign. Moreover, while many people might have viewed the more troubling points of his time as emperor as a period of decline, his reign was actually a kind of golden age for the Byzantine Empire, one of revival after many centuries of decline. Exactly how successful it had been would be made strikingly clear within a few decades as the Byzantine Empire entered a period of profound crisis which would see them lose over two-thirds of their remaining territory. The sources of their demise cannot have been foreseen. The major one came from the deserts of Arabia. In the 620s CE a religious prophet there by the name of Muhammad managed to unite a large confederacy of the tribes of western Arabia as he proclaimed himself to be a new religious messiah in the line of Moses and Jesus Christ. The Arab conquests that followed were bewildering. By the 630s CE they were streaming into the Levant and between 639 CE and 642 CE they conquered Egypt from the Byzantines. Over the next several decades they conquered vast territory all across North Africa and throughout the Middle East. In 674 CE, just over a century after Justinian’s time, they commenced the first siege of Constantinople, though they would never be able to take the Byzantine capital with its stout walls. Taxed with this enemy, the Byzantines could also do little to withstand further waves of invasion to the north by people such as the Avars and Bulgars. For a time the Byzantine Empire would be reduced to little more than Constantinople and some outlying territories. It recovered in time to some extent, but much of its territory was lost forever to the Arab Caliphate and there would never again be a revival of the kind briefly seen under Justinian. Moreover, in the course of the eighth and ninth centuries, the Arabs would develop an extensive navy in the Western Mediterranean which allowed them to conquer the remaining Byzantine outposts there from Belisarius’s time. Justinian’s dream of the Renovatio Imperii Romanorum was over.   

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Sources: 

James Allan Evans, The Emperor Justinian and the Byzantine Empire (Westport, Connecticut, 2005). 

Glanville Downey, ‘Justinian as a Builder’, in The Art Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 4 (December, 1950), pp. 262–266. 

Glanville Downey, ‘The Persian Campaign in Syria in A.D. 540’, in Speculum, Vol. 28, No. 2 (April, 1953), pp. 340–348. 

Geoffrey Greatrex, ‘The Nika Riot: A Reappraisal’, in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 117 (1997), pp. 60–86. 

Peter Heather, Rome Resurgent: War and Empire in the Age of Justinian (Oxford, 2018). 

Reece Kimble, The Worst Year Ever 536 AD: Volcano, Mini Ice Age, Plague, and an Emperor Who Taxed the Dead (New York, 2022). 

John Meyendorff, ‘Justinian, the Empire and the Church’, in Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 22 (1968), pp. 43–60. 
Peter Sarris, Justinian: Emperor, Soldier, Saint (London, 2024).