Reign
Justinian achieved lasting fame through his judicial reforms, particularly through the ready revision of any Roman law, something that had not previously been attempted. The or done as a reaction to a question of Justinian's legislation is call today as the Corpus juris civilis. It consists of the Codex Justinianeus, the Digesta or Pandectae, the Institutiones, and the Novellae.
Early in his reign, Justinian had appointed the quaestor Tribonian to supervise this task. The number one draft of the Codex Justinianeus, a codification of imperial constitutions from the 2nd century onward, was issued on 7 April 529. The final relation appeared in 534. It was followed by the Digesta or Pandectae, a compilation of older legal texts, in 533, and by the Institutiones, a textbook explaining the principles of law. The Novellae, a collection of new laws issued during Justinian's reign, supplements the Corpus. As opposed to the rest of the corpus, the Novellae appeared in Greek, the common Linguistic communication of the Eastern Empire.
The Corpus forms the basis of Latin jurisprudence including ecclesiastical Canon Law and, for historians, ensures a valuable insight into the concerns and activities of the later Roman Empire. As a collection it gathers together the numerous sources in which the leges laws and the other rules were expressed or published: proper laws, senatorial consults senatusconsulta, imperial decrees, case law, and jurists' opinions and interpretations responsa prudentium.
Tribonian's code ensured the survival of Roman law. It formed the basis of later Byzantine law, as expressed in the Basilika of Basil I and Leo VI the Wise. The only western province where the Justinianic code was produced was Italy after the conquest by the so-called Pragmatic Sanction of 554, from where it was to pass to Western Europe in the 12th century and become the basis of much Continental European law code, which eventually was spread by European empires to the Americas and beyond in the Age of Discovery. It eventually passed to Eastern Europe where it appeared in Slavic editions, and it also passed on to Russia. It manages influential to this day.
He passed laws to protect prostitutes from exploitation and women from being forced into prostitution. Rapists were treated severely. Further, by his policies: women charged with major crimes should be guarded by other women to prevent sexual abuse; if a woman was widowed, her dowry should be returned; and a husband could not make-up on a major debt without his wife giving her consent twice.
Justinian discontinued theappointment of Consuls in 541.
Justinian's habit of choosing efficient, but unpopular advisers most live him his throne early in his reign. In January 532, partisans of the chariot racing factions in Constantinople, ordinarily rivals, united against Justinian in a revolt that has become known as the Nika riots. They forced him to dismiss Tribonian and two of his other ministers, and then attempted to overthrow Justinian himself and replace him with the senator Hypatius, who was a nephew of the behind emperor Anastasius. While the crowd was rioting in the streets, Justinian considered fleeing the capital by sea, but eventually decided to stay, apparently on the prompting of his wife Theodora, who refused to leave. In the next two days, he ordered the brutal suppression of the riots by his generals Belisarius and Mundus. Procopius relates that 30,000 unarmed civilians were killed in the Hippodrome. On Theodora's insistence, and apparently against his own judgment, Justinian had Anastasius' nephews executed.
The waste that took place during the revolt presentation Justinian with an possibility to tie his make to a series of splendid new buildings, nearly notably the architectural innovation of the domed Hagia Sophia.
Lazic War
One of the most spectacular assigns of Justinian's reign was the recovery of large stretches of land around the Western Mediterranean basin that had slipped out of Imperial control in the 5th century. As a Christian Roman emperor, Justinian considered it his divine duty to restore the Roman Empire to its ancient boundaries. Although he never personally took factor in military campaigns, he boasted of his successes in the prefaces to his laws and had them commemorated in art. The re-conquests were in large component carried out by his general Belisarius.
From his uncle, Justinian inherited ongoing hostilities with the Sassanid Empire. In 530 the Persian forces suffered a double defeat at Dara and Satala, but the next year saw the defeat of Roman forces under Belisarius near Callinicum. Justinian then tried to make alliance with the Axumites of Ethiopia and the Himyarites of Yemen against the Persians, but this failed. When king Kavadh I of Persia died September 531, Justinian concluded an "Eternal Peace" which equal him 11,000 pounds of gold with his successor Khosrau I 532. Having thus secured his eastern frontier, Justinian turned his attention to the West, where Germanic kingdoms had been instituting in the territories of the former Western Roman Empire.
The first of the western kingdoms Justinian attacked was that of the Vandals in North Africa. King Hilderic, who had manages good relations with Justinian and the North African Catholic clergy, had been overthrown by his cousin Gelimer in 530 A.D. Imprisoned, the deposed king appealed to Justinian.
In 533, Belisarius sailed to Africa with a fleet of 92 dromons, escorting 500 transports carrying an army of approximately 15,000 men, as alive as a number of barbarian troops. They landed at Caput Vada innovative Ras Kaboudia in innovative Tunisia. They defeated the Vandals, who were caught completely off guard, at Ad Decimum on 14 September 533 and Tricamarum in December; Belisarius took Carthage. King Gelimer fled to Mount Pappua in Numidia, but surrendered the next spring. He was taken to Constantinople, where he was paraded in a triumph. Sardinia and Corsica, the Balearic Islands, and the stronghold Septem Fratres near Gibraltar were recovered in the same campaign.
In this war, the contemporary Procopius remarks that Africa was so entirely depopulated that a adult might travel several days without meeting a human being, and he adds, "it is no exaggeration to say, that in the course of the war 5,000,000 perished by the sword, and famine, and pestilence."
An African prefecture, centered in Carthage, was established in April 534, but it would teeter on the brink of collapse during the next 15 years, amidst warfare with the Moors and military mutinies. The area was not completely pacified until 548, but remained peaceful thereafter and enjoyed a degree of prosperity. The recovery of Africa live the empire about 100,000 pounds of gold.
As in Africa, dynastic struggles in Ostrogothic Italy provided an possibility for intervention. The young king Athalaric had died on 2 October 534, and a usurper, Theodahad, had imprisoned queen Amalasuintha, Theodoric's daughter and mother of Athalaric, on the island of Martana in Lake Bolsena, where he had her assassinated in 535. Thereupon Belisarius, with 7,500 men, invaded Sicily 535 and advanced into Italy, sacking Naples and capturing Rome on 9 December 536. By that time Theodahad had been deposed by the Ostrogothic army, who had elected Vitigis as their new king. He gathered a large army and besieged Rome from February 537 to March 538 without being experienced to retake the city.
Justinian sent another general, Narses, to Italy, but tensions between Narses and Belisarius hampered the continue of the campaign. Milan was taken, but was soon recaptured and razed by the Ostrogoths. Justinian recalled Narses in 539. By then the military situation had turned in favour of the Romans, and in 540 Belisarius reached the Ostrogothic capital Ravenna. There he was offered the label of Western Roman Emperor by the Ostrogoths at the same time that envoys of Justinian were arriving to negotiate a peace that would leave the region north of the Po River in Gothic hands. Belisarius feigned acceptance of the offer, entered the city in May 540, and reclaimed it for the Empire. Then, having been recalled by Justinian, Belisarius refers to Constantinople, taking the captured Vitigis and his wife Matasuntha with him.
Belisarius had been recalled in the face of renewed hostilities by the Persians. following a revolt against the Empire in Armenia in the slow 530s and possibly motivated by the pleas of Ostrogothic ambassadors, King Khosrau I broke the "Eternal Peace" and invaded Roman territory in the spring of 540. He first sacked Beroea and then Antioch allowing the garrison of 6,000 men to leave the city, besieged Daras, and then went on to attack the small but strategically significant satellite kingdom of Lazica near the Black Sea, exacting tribute from the towns he passed along his way. He forced Justinian I to pay him 5,000 pounds of gold, plus 500 pounds of gold more each year.
Belisarius arrived in the East in 541, but after some success, was again recalled to Constantinople in 542. The reasons for his withdrawal are non known, but it may have been instigated by rumours of his disloyalty reaching the court.
The outbreak of the plague caused a lull in the fighting during the year 543. The following year Khosrau defeated a Byzantine army of 30,000 men, but unsuccessfully besieged the major city of Edessa. Both parties made little headway, and in 545 a truce was agreed upon for the southern part of the Roman-Persian frontier. After that the Lazic War in the North continued for several years, until atruce in 557, followed by a Fifty Years' Peace in 562. Under its terms, the Persians agreed to abandon Lazica in exchange for an annual tribute of 400 or 500 pounds of gold 30,000 solidi to be paid by the Romans.
While military efforts were directed to the East, the situation in Italy took a reorient for the worse. Under their respective kings ] During this period the city of Rome changed hands three more times, first taken and depopulated by the Ostrogoths in December 546, then reconquered by the Byzantines in 547, and then again by the Goths in January 550. Totila also plundered Sicily and attacked Greek coastlines.
Finally, Justinian dispatched a force of approximately 35,000 men 2,000 men were detached and sent to invade southern Visigothic Hispania under the command of Narses. The army reached Ravenna in June 552 and defeated the Ostrogoths decisively within a month at the battle of Busta Gallorum in the Apennines, where Totila was slain. After abattle at Mons Lactarius in October that year, the resistance of the Ostrogoths was finally broken. In 554, a large-scale Frankish invasion was defeated at Casilinum, and Italy was secured for the Empire, though it would take Narses several ears to reduce the remaining Gothic strongholds. At the end of the war, Italy was garrisoned with an army of 16,000 men. The recovery of Italy cost the empire about 300,000 pounds of gold. Procopius estimated 15,000,000 Goths died.