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Updated: June 10, 2025
Sicily was conquered , and Naples and Rome were taken . Vitiges, the new king of the Goths, united the forces of the nation; but he was driven to shut himself up in Ravenna, and Ravenna surrendered . The Goths had offered the sovereignty of the country to Belisarius. The jealousy of Justinian, and war with Persia, led to the recall of Belisarius before he could complete the work of conquest.
Belisarius was sent with another army to Sicily in 535, and after subduing that island and suppressing a revolt in Africa, he invaded Italy in 536. In March, Vitiges, the Gothic ruler, returned with a force of one hundred and fifty thousand men.
Justinian was impatient to have done with the Italian war, for the general situation was extremely grave; upon the Danube an invasion of Slavs was gathering; in Asia, Persia threatened the empire. It is not altogether surprising then that Justinian now made an attempt to come to terms with Vitiges behind the back of Belisarius.
In 540, after Ravenna had been occupied, Belisarius recalled, and Vitiges taken as a captive to Constantinople, the Romans held all Italy except the city of Pavia. In 544, when Belisarius returned, they held only Ravenna, Rome, Spoleto, and a few other strongholds such as Perugia and Piacenza. Nor was this all.
Indeed, while the siege lasted a whole year, nearly all the people of Rome died of hunger and wretchedness; and the Goths, in the unhealthy Campagna around, died of fevers and agues, until they, too, had all perished except a small band, which Vitiges led back to Ravenna, whither Belisarius followed him, besieged him, made him prisoner, and carried him to Constantinople.
They declared that he had secretly embezzled most of the property of Gelimer and Vitiges, which belonged to the State, and that he had restored a small part alone, and one hardly worthy of an Emperor's acceptance.
Yet, before he retired, Vitiges made a last effort, either to storm or to surprise the city.
At any rate, he is generally considered to have acted with criminal folly, when, as the first act of his reign, he abandoned Rome and fell back upon Ravenna, determined to make his great defence in northern Italy. But I think, if we consider the position more closely, we shall see that Vitiges was not such a fool as he looks.
But Belisarius was sure of his ground. The Goths pressed by famine could hold out no longer, and weary of Vitiges, who had given them no success, yet afraid of yielding to the emperor lest he should remove them out of Italy to Constantinople and thereabout, they resolved, of all things, to declare Belisarius emperor in the West.
Yet all was not lost, as long as Pavia was defended by one thousand Goths, inspired by a sense of honor, the love of freedom, and the memory of their past greatness. The supreme command was unanimously offered to the brave Uraias; and it was in his eyes alone that the disgrace of his uncle Vitiges could appear as a reason of exclusion.
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