Flavius Belisarius (
Greek ?e??s?????, ca. 500
[1] – 565) was one of the greatest
generals of the
Byzantine Empire. He was instrumental to
Emperor Justinian I's ambitious project of reconquering much of the old
Western Roman Empire, which had been lost just under a century previously.
One of the defining features of Belisarius' career was his operating under conditions of little or no support from his emperor Justinian and Byzantium, and nonetheless succeeding through military genius. He is also among a select group of men considered to be the "Last of the Romans".
Belisarius was probably born in Germane or Germania, a city that once stood on the site of present day Sapareva Banya in south-west Bulgaria. He may have been of Greek or Thracian ancestry.[2] He became a Roman soldier as a young man, serving in the bodyguard of the Emperor Justin I. Following Justin's death in 527, the new Emperor, Justinian I, appointed Belisarius to command the Byzantine army in the east to deal with incursions from the Sassanid Empire. He quickly proved himself an able and effective commander, defeating the larger Sassanid army through superior generalship. In June 530 during the Iberian War, he led the Byzantines to a stunning victory over the Sassanids in the Battle of Dara, followed by a close defeat at the Battle of Callinicum on the Euphrates in 531. This led to the negotiation of an "Endless Peace" with the Persians and heavy tributes for years in exchange for a peace treaty.
In 532, he was the highest ranking military officer in the Imperial capital of Constantinople when the Nika riots (among factions of chariot racing fans) broke out in the city and nearly resulted in the overthrow of Justinian. Belisarius, with the help of the magister militum of Illyria, Mundus, along with the generals Narses and John the Armenian suppressed the rebellion with a bloodbath in the Hippodrome, the gathering place of the rebels, that is said to have claimed the lives of 30,000 people.
