Triumph

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The state of the world looked promising for the Roman Emperor Justinian in the Year of Our Lord 536. Sicily was Goth free and wholly pacified, while Sardinia and Corsica were firmly in the right hands. If there were continuing rumblings of discontent in the reconquered provinces of North Africa that was a region requiring to be pacified rather than fought for. Victory had also just been achieved over the Ostrogoths in Illyricum, securing the Adriatic coast all the way north to the River Timavo, the border with Italy proper.

The reconquest of the remainder of the Western Roman Empire was now deemed to be possible, this being an ambition Justinian had long harboured, one he had craved even before his elevation to the purple. Waiting in Sicily, Constantinople’s most successful military commander and the magister militum per Orientem. Flavius Belisarius, was instructed to cross the Straits of Messina and begin the conquest of the mainland.

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