The Dark Ages and Constantinople’s Effort to Restore the Western Roman Empire

The Last Great Roman General

Epic History (2023)

Film Review

I found this documentary really intriguing. In US schools and universities, we are taught the “barbarians” caused the West to enter a dark age after the fall of the Rome. According to Western academics, there’s nothing worthwhile to study prior to Charlemagne and the rise of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 AD.

As I learned from this film, the depopulation and loss of scientific, literary and artistic brilliance has less to do with the rise of the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy after 476 AD than with the continuous wars between the Roman empire (now ruled from Constantinople) to restore Roman control over Italy.

The truth is that Ostrogoth rulers, who consciously modeled their rule after their Roman rivals in Constantinople, made a concerted effort to continue their support for science, literature and art.

This film begins with the rise to power (in Constantinople) of the emperor Justinian in 527 AD (50 years after the fall of Rome) and his chief general Belisarius. The latter first came to prominence in 532 AD when he crushed a civil war in Constantinople that was trying to remove Justinian a emperor.

At the time the eastern Roman empire, which had 30 million people. Its territory Included the Egyptian bread basket, Palestine, the Balkans, and the Arabian desert. With strong alliances with both the Ostrogoths and the Vandals (who ruled North Africa), Constantinople’s primary enemy was the Sassanid (Persian) on its northwest border. .

After signing a perpetual peace with treat the Persians in 532 AD, Justin launched an aggressive war first in North Africa and then on the Italian peninsula. His goal waa to return these territories to Roman control.

The documentary examines all Belisarius’s battles in lengthy detail. What I found most significant is that while retaining the basic Roman legion structure initiated by Julius Caesar, Roman armies now mainly relied on cavalry to charge the enemy, as well as mounted archers using a composite bow (adopted from the Huns). In addition, both the Romans and the Ostrogoths employed advanced siege towers to besiege cities.

Belisarius, who employed a number of Hun and Ostrogoth mercenaries, quickly retook the Vandal kingdom in North Africa, followed by Sardinia, Corsica and Sicily. Over a period of five years, he gradually conquered the entire the Italian peninsula. Southern Italians, fed up with Ostrogoth rule, welcomed him.

After conquering Naples, his troops experienced no resistance in Rome (population 100,000 compared to 500,000 in its heyday) because the Ostrogoth troops, mistakenly believing they were outnumbered, had abandoned the city. Political intrigue among Justinian’s generals resulted in the Ostrogoth sacking of Milan, Italy’s largest city, which they burned to the ground. As the war resulted in two years of lost harvests, this disaster was compounded by famine.

Concerned by Belisarius’s successes in Italy and North Africa, the Persians attacked Antioch and other Roman strongholds, forcing Justinian to pay 10,000 pounds of gold in tribute over the next ten years.

Gothic War 535-554

Due to a combination famine, plague and Justinian’s refusal to adequately support Belasarius’s legions, the Ostrogoths retook Italy and the Berbers North African in 549.

In 552, a second Roman general Narses retook Italy, which Rome held until 568, when it was conquered by the Lombards.