A barefoot shepherd boy from what is now Bulgaria walked for weeks through dark forests and river crossings to reach Constantinople with nothing but the name of an uncle who had made good. He came back as emperor, sent armies to reclaim North Africa and Italy from the Vandals and Ostrogoths, built the greatest church in the Christian world, and codified the entirety of Roman law into a single system that still underlies the legal codes of most of Europe today. The Justinian Code. The Hagia Sophia. The reconquest of the west. Not bad for a boy who arrived in the city with dirt on his feet.
Sometime around the year 500, a teenager in the mountains of what is now Bulgaria packed whatever he had and started walking toward Constantinople. He had no money for the journey. He would eat fruit he gathered along the road. He would walk every step of the way. His uncle Justin had gone to the big city years earlier and joined the Roman army, rising until he commanded the emperor's own guard. The boy had heard this story all his life. He was going to find his uncle and make something of himself in the world. The walk took several weeks. When he finally arrived at Constantinople — still the greatest city in the world, seat of the Eastern Roman Empire — he found his uncle without difficulty. Everyone in the city knew the commander of the imperial guard. Justin took him in, gave him the best education Constantinople could offer, and waited to see what he would make of it.
Justinian reigned for nearly forty years, directing military campaigns that reclaimed much of the western Mediterranean, building the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, and commissioning the legal code that bears his name and still shapes European jurisprudence.
From Shepherd to Emperor
The boy, whose name was Petrus Sabbatius but who adopted his uncle's name and became known to history as Justinian, turned out to be an exceptional student. He grew into a tall, good-looking man with black eyes and curly hair — always well-dressed, respected throughout the emperor's court for his learning and intelligence. When Justin was elected emperor following the death of his predecessor, the young scholar who had once been a barefoot shepherd was suddenly nephew to the ruler of the eastern world. After some years, Justin's health failed and he made Justinian co-emperor. When Justin died a few months later, Justinian was sole emperor. It was 527 AD. He would reign for nearly forty years and give his name to one of the most consequential periods in Byzantine history.
Belisarius: The General Who Won Everything
Justinian was not a military man and knew it. What he had was the judgment to find men who were. He found two: Belisarius and Narses. Belisarius was one of the greatest soldiers in all of late antique history — arguably the finest general between Caesar and the medieval period. He had a gift for rapid movement, for logistics, for keeping armies functioning in difficult terrain. And Justinian gave him campaigns that would have broken lesser men. The Vandal kingdom in North Africa had existed for nearly a century by the time Justinian decided to take it back. Belisarius sailed from Constantinople with 35,000 men and 5,000 horses on 600 ships. The voyage took three months — no steamships, only sails and oars when the wind failed. When he landed in Africa the local population received him warmly. They had grown tired of Vandal rule. About ten miles from Carthage, Belisarius met the main Vandal army. He broke it. The Vandal king Gelimer fled. Belisarius marched into Carthage. Gelimer raised another army and tried again. Belisarius broke that one too. Gelimer eventually surrendered, was brought to Constantinople, given an estate to live on, and passed the rest of his days in quiet retirement. The Vandal kingdom was gone. Then Justinian sent Belisarius and Narses to take Italy from the Ostrogoths. The campaign lasted years and was more difficult than Africa had been, but in the end Rome itself was again under the flag of a Roman emperor. Belisarius and Narses pushed north and finished the job there too.