ministers in 532 and encouraged by his redoubtable empress, the former actress Theodora.

Throughout the 530s Justinian undertook a lavish programme of building, including the Church of Hagia Sofia in Constantinople with its dome of unprecedented size. His military success continued with an invasion of Sicily and Italy, and by 540 the Ostrogoths had lost their main political centres of Rome and Ravenna. Although his propaganda stressed the renewal of Rome's greatness, his actions resulted in the replacement of the cosy bureaucratic system of the east by a 'Stalinist' regime based on his own megalomaniac energy, ruthless political and fiscal oppression of his subjects, reliance on unpopular toadies, and rigorous enforcement of doctrinal orthodoxy.

In the 540s Justinian's luck ran out. Persia launched a devastating invasion of the east, the Slavs infiltrated the Balkans, and under an able new king, Totila, the Ostrogoths reduced the imperial foothold in Italy to a few coastal outposts. In 542 bubonic plague decimated the empire's population, with catastrophic effects on urban and economic life, and in 548 his helpmate Theodora died. The remaining years of Justinian's reign have a relentless, austere quality. In spite of all the vicissitudes the emperor kept his nerve, repelling invasions, sending a force to Italy under Narses which dealt the Ostrogoths the coup de grĂ¢ce in 553, and tirelessly seeking to reconcile his heretical subjects in the east to orthodoxy.

By his death in 565 Justinian appeared to have succeeded in restoring the glories of Rome. The Arian kingdoms of Africa and Italy had been returned to imperial rule, and even the Burgundian kingdom was taken over by Justinian's Frankish allies in the 530s. Only Visigothic Spain held out, and it was threatened by internal dissensions and a Byzantine salient around Cartagena. In other ways Justinian's reign marked a new beginning for the Roman Empire. His ideals of autocracy and Romano-Christian universalism became a programme to which all later Byzantine emperors subscribed. The upheavals of the fifth century had not destroyed the relatively uniform Roman life of the Mediterranean.

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