The Goths made overtures for peace, and Belisarius agreed to a truce to allow the Goths to send representatives to Emperor Justinian in Constantinople. In the meantime a small number of reinforcements–3,000 Isaurian infantry and 800 Thracian cavalry–finally reached Rome along with supplies that came up the Tiber during the truce.

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At that point the struggle took another turn as Belisarius decided to go on the offensive. He instructed one of his subordinate officers, John, who bore the Latin nickname Sanguinarius, or ‘Bloody,’ to move north into Tuscany. He told John to observe the truce but to raid whenever he found the Goths had violated it–which, as he had expected, they did. Bloody John led a troop of 2,000 horsemen and encountered little resistance because most of the male Goths of military age were involved in the siege of Rome. Thus he swept across the north in accordance with Belisarius’ orders not to engage enemy troops of any size or to try to take any fortified places. After an encouraging number of successes, however, he advanced against the Gothic capital of Ravenna.

When news of John’s raid reached Vittigis at Rome, he decided to make a last effort to take the city, starting with an unsuccessful attempt to slip soldiers into Rome through an aqueduct as Belisarius had done at Naples, only to be foiled by an attentive guard. He then tried to use agents in the city to intoxicate the guards at the Asinarian Gate, but one of them betrayed the plan to Belisarius. A final assault with scaling ladders at the Pincian Gate also failed.

At that point, the siege of Rome ended not with a bang but with a whimper. By early 538, the Goths had plundered farms throughout the surrounding countryside and were suffering from hunger and plague. On March 12, Vittigis and his dispirited men burned their camps and withdrew toward Ravenna. Belisarius made a last sally and attacked an enemy band crossing the Mulvian Bridge. The Byzantines killed a few of the enemy soldiers but the retreating Goths’ greatest loss came as many of them panicked and fell from the bridge.

For a year and nine days, a small Byzantine army had held Rome against disproportionate numerical odds. It was a remarkable victory for Belisarius, but its significance was limited. Vittigis drove Bloody John’s small force into Rimini, but Belisarius, joined by another Byzantine army commanded by the Armenian eunuch general Narses, compelled the Goths to withdraw to their capital of Ravenna. In late 539, the Goths offered to support Belisarius as emperor of the west, which he pretended to accept until Ravenna surrendered–at which point he sent Vittigis to Constantinople as a prisoner. Justinian learned of the Goths’ offer, and although Belisarius had not accepted it, he began to doubt the general’s loyalty. In 541, he recalled Belisarius to Constantintople–at which point the Ostrogoths, under the leadership of Ildibad and, after his death, Vittigis’ nephew Totila, retook most of what the Byzantines had gained. In 544, Justinian sent Belisarius–again with an inadequate force of 4,000 troops–back to Italy, where Totila took Rome in the following year, only to lose it to Belisarius soon afterward. Belisarius successfully withstood a second siege by Totila in 546, but in 549 the jealous Justinian recalled him to Constantinople once more.

The Gothic War dragged on for years, during which Italy subsequently was ravaged by another campaign against the Franks, who invaded from the north to take advantage of the weakened Ostrogoths. In the end, the effort was just too great for Byzantine resources, even though they had destroyed the Ostrogothic kingdom. To defeat the enemy was one thing, to hold the territory quite another. Over time Byzantine control persisted in southern Italy and in Sicily. Other Byzantine enclaves in the west were Sardinia, Corsica and southern Spain, and the Frankish kingdom of Gaul nominally recognized Justinian as its overlord. Whatever the long-term effects of the campaign, however, the defense of Rome remains an amazing feat and an example of what a small, determined and organized force can do against overwhelming odds.

This article was written by Erik Hildinger and originally published in the October 1999 issue of Military History.

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