Thread by @byzantineprof

Ostrogothic Italy in 526 was a successful, flourishing kingdom. By the time Roman forces had finished reclaiming the bulk of Italy in 555, the prosperity of the peninsula was ruined. Some modern historians blame Justinian. Is that fair? A 🧵 #Roman #Byzantine #Italy 🇮🇹

First, we start with a brief historical overview. The Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy, founded by Theodoric the Great (r. 493-526), was an early medieval successor state of the Western Roman Empire. Under Theodoric, the kingdom became rich and prosperous.

The death of Theodoric, followed by the death of his grandson and successor Athalaric in 534, led to political destabilization in the kingdom. Both Athalric's mother, Amalsuntha, and her murderer and successor, Theodahad, contemplated ceding Italy to the Roman Empire.

This seems to have stoked the ambitions of the Roman emperor Justinian (r. 527-565), who thought that the time was ripe to restore Italy to Roman rule. So in 535, Justinian dispatched two armies into territory controlled by the Ostrogoths, one in Dalmatia and one in Sicily.

It seems that Justinian fully expected Theodahad to surrender the Ostrogothic Kingdom in exchange for titles and rich estates in the east, and so these armies were probably intended to occupy ceded territory rather than fight a prolonged war.

But at the last moment, Theodahad stiffened his spine, and suddenly it was to be war. The Roman-Gothic war lasted for decades. The Goths lost most of Italy and their capital (Ravenna) by 540, but then surged back to retake most of Italy, and the war smoldered on.

The last Gothic forces south of the Po River were defeated in 555, but the final stronghold of resistance (Verona) was not captured by the Romans until 561. By this point, Italy was devastated. Many of its cities were depopulated and its agricultural prosperity was ruined.

Modern historians sometimes look at these events and conclude that the destruction of Italy was Justinian's fault. It had been flourishing under the Ostrogoths, and then Justinian launched a war, and when the war was over Italy was a wreck. Ergo, it was Justinian's fault.

This is not just an old interpretation. For some historians who have said this very recently, see Peter Heather, Rome Resurgent (2018), p. 271 and Edward Watts, The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome (2021), p. 129.

However, I think that solely blaming Justinian personally for the destruction of Italy is too simplistic. It ignores three factors that led to Italy being laid to waste in the sixth century, which were outside of the emperor's control:

1. Climate: The northern hemisphere experienced a climate shock known as the Late Antique Little Ice Age, which began with a series of horrific volcanic eruptions in 536. These eruptions belched enough smoke and soot to obstruct the sun for a large portion of 536.

The obstructed sun led to lower temperatures and, not surprisingly, less than ideal conditions for agriculture. This in turn resulted in poor growing seasons for the next couple of years, which seems to have created a horrible famine. Many thousands died in Italy.

The war was not slowed down by this climate catastrophe, but clearly the lack of food and famine was the first step in what would be the depopulation of Italy and wrecking of its economy. As a natural disaster, of course Justinian cannot be blamed for this.

If you want to learn more about the climate shock of 536 and the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA), I recommend this recent article:
researchgate.net/publication/26…

2. Plague: As if the Late Antique Little Ice Age was not enough, a pestilence which would be known as the Justinianic Plague emerged a few years later. First noticed in Egypt in 541, this was an outbreak of bubonic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia Pestis.

By 542, the plague had spread to most of the cities of the Mediterranean and beyond, and was killing people by the hundreds of thousands. Famously, Procopius claims that the plague killed 10,000 people per day in Constantinople alone at the height of its deadliness.

Surely the plague killed thousands upon thousands in Italy, a harsh blow to the demography of the peninsula which would have also had knock-on effects on agriculture, trade, and other aspects of the region's economy. Again, a natural disaster out of Justinian's control.

If you want to learn more about the impact of the Justinianic Plague on the sixth-century Mediterranean world as a whole, I recommend this recent article by @peter_sarris:
academic.oup.com/past/article/2…

3. The shape of Gothic resistance: Justinian surely knew the Ostrogoths would fight back, but he cannot have known how brutally they would do so. Put bluntly, the Ostrogoths fought like they wanted the region destroyed if they could not possess it.

When Roman forces took cities in Italy during the war, they by and large did so without excessive violence, with one exception (Naples in 536). However, when Ostrogothic forces took cities in Italy during the war, they plundered and destroyed.

Two notable examples: Milan, which the Ostrogoths razed to the ground when they took it in 539. During this destruction the Goths allegedly killed 300,000 people. Rome, which the Ostrogoths depopulated so completely in 547 that we are told "neither man nor beast" remained.

If you want to learn more about the depopulation of Rome in 547, the story is vividly told in Episode 6 of the Belisarius series by @EpicHistoryTV:

In short, the Ostrogoths chose to fight in a way that exacerbated the depopulation of Italy and the wreckage of its economy. Justinian could not have foreseen this and his armies were unable to prevent it.

To conclude, I am not arguing that Justinian bears *zero* responsibility for the destruction of Italy's prosperity. He did, after all, launch a war, and even if he thought that war justified, and even if he had no idea what destruction that war would wrought, he did start it.

However, the climate disaster of 536, the arrival of the plague in 542, and the violent and destructive Gothic resistance all contributed substantially to the depopulation and wreckage of Italy, and these were factors outside of Justinian's control.

Unless, of course, you believe, as Procopius wrote in the Secret History, that Justinian was the Lord of the Demons. In that case, blaming him for natural disasters and the actions of the Ostrogoths makes sense! Fin.