Belisarius: The Last Roman General
Ian Hughes
Westholme Publishing, 2009

When the scheming, devious, brilliant, fearless, neurotic emperor Justinian I came to power in 527, he confronted his own paltry and fractured inheritance with his eyes wide open. The entirety of the old sprawling Roman Empire, of which he was the nominal head, had fallen onto evil times since the bright days of Trajan and Hadrian centuries before. Successive waves of foreign invasion had battered the once-magnificent ramparts of Roman invincibility, and faction had long since been bitterly codified at court. Supplicants kissed the earth as they approached Justinian’s throne, but the earth no longer belonged to Rome, as it once had.

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Justinian devised a mad course to change that; he set out to re-conquer lost Roman lands in North Africa and Italy. No amount of money or manpower would have seen this accomplished if Justinian hadn’t also had the right man for the job. He did have that man, his famous general Belisarius, and through skillful maneuvering, careful coalition-building, and, incidentally, large amounts of tactical and strategic brilliance, Belisarius actually managed to rekindle the light of lost Roman triumphs in virtually every theater where his forces operated. Ian Hughes, in his new book, refers to Belisarius as “the last Roman general” – he was certainly the last great Roman general.

It’s an incredible story, lure for historians, moralists, and novelists over the centuries (not even Robert Graves could make it dull, though his Count Belisarius gives it the old college try), and Hughes prosecutes it with the thoroughness of a municipal pipe-layer. No square foot is left untouched, everything is systematically addressed, and there is not an ounce of panache anywhere on the premises.

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Belisarius historians almost reflexively assume this stenographer’s approach, probably because their main source, Procopius, balanced his own sober public account of the great general with his Secret History, a wildly scandalous collection of anecdotes about Justinian, Belisarius, and their wives that’s still compulsively fun reading.

Nobody could call Belisarius: The Last Roman General compulsively fun reading. Hughes is instructively thorough, mind you – as a comprehensive introduction to Belisarius and his world, this book would be hard to beat. But Hughes spends a lot of time warning and re-warning his readers about Procopius, that scamp:

What is clear is Procopius’ dislike of Antonina [the general’s wife], and this should be remembered when reading his account of her; throughout Anekdota [that’s what classicists call The Secret History] she is ridiculed, especially concerning her nature, her reckless personal life, and her origins. For her grandfather and father were charioteers in the Hippodrome. Although as such they could be famous, and possibly rather well-off, they would not be acceptable in polite society.

Hughes, on the other hand, is always acceptable in polite society. And if that functions as a warning to you in reading his book, so be it.

–Steve Donoghue