JUSTINIAN'S WARS

In late July 533 a fleet of 600 vessels left Constantinople and headed west. On board was an army of at least 17,000 men under the command of Belisarius, another commander of Balkan extraction, who had distinguished himself on the Persian front and in quelling the Nike revolt in Constantinople. The latter – an uprising of the capital's citizens in January 532 – had come close to costing the emperor Justinian his throne and life (the rebellion drew its name from the rallying cry of ‘Nike!’ or ‘Victory!’). The dispatch of the fleet would distract attention from the emperor's unpopular domestic policies but this was not the principal reason. The expedition had been a long time in planning. Under Justinian and his predecessor and uncle, Justin I, a new, aggressive ideology had begun to emanate from Constantinople, stressing the loss of the west to the barbarians. In part, as we have seen, this was possibly a response to the increasingly self-confident ideological output of Theoderic's later years, which might have begun to be matched in the Frankish realms. Justinian's project for the reconquest of the west was the outcome of this ideological conflict.

Justinian's cordial relationships with the Ostrogothic queen Amalasuentha enabled Belisarius' fleet to head for Sicily but its true objective was Vandal Africa. A revolt had broken out in Sardinia, doubtless fuelled by imperial gold, and the Vandal fleet and many troops were absent from Africa quelling this uprising.