Gothic War (535–552) in the context of Ostrogothic Kingdom

⭐ Core Definition: Gothic War (535–552)

The Gothic War between the Byzantine Empire during the reign of Emperor Justinian I and the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy took place from 535 to 554 in the Italian peninsula, Dalmatia, Sardinia, Sicily, and Corsica. It was one of the last of the many Gothic wars against the Roman Empire. The war had its roots in the ambition of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I to recover the provinces of the former Western Roman Empire, which the Romans had lost to invading barbarian tribes in the previous century, during the Migration Period.

The war followed the Roman reconquest of the diocese of Africa from the Vandals. Historians commonly divide the war into two phases. The first phase lasts from 535 to the fall of the Ostrogothic capital Ravenna in 540, and the apparent reconquest of Italy by the Byzantines. The second phase from 540/541 to 553 featured a Gothic revival under Totila, which was suppressed only after a long struggle by the Roman general Narses, who also repelled an invasion in 554 by the Franks and Alamanni.

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Gothic War (535–552) in the context of Mediolanum

Mediolanum, the ancient city where Milan now stands, was originally an Insubrian city, but afterwards became an important Roman city in Northern Italy.

The city was settled by a Celtic tribe belonging to the Insubres group and belonging to the Golasecca culture under the name Medhelanon around 590 BC, conquered by the Romans in 222 BC, who Latinized the name of the city into Mediolanum, and developed into a key centre of Western Christianity and informal capital of the Western Roman Empire. It declined under the ravages of the Gothic War, its capture by the Lombards in 569, and their decision to make Ticinum the capital of their Kingdom of Italy.

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