Belisarius Returns to Italy

The Gothic Wars (535 - 554) under Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I were created to reunify the Western Roman Empire with the Eastern. They were successful, thanks to the strategies and (in one case) subterfuge of General Belisarius. After his initial success, however, Belisarius had to return to deal with additional problems, some of them caused by his own people.Italy had been divided among several military commanders so that no one man would gain enough power to try to set up his own kingdom. That did not mean, however, that all the commanders were ethical. One of these commanders, a man named Alexander, turned out to be corrupt. One of his corrupt acts was the crime of "coin clipping": trimming the edges off gold coins and using the gold bits to make your own coins or to sell.Alexander also charged soldiers under his command with corruption and forced them to pay fines. His soldiers began to mutiny, and some to simply quit. The Justinian Plague also meant many commanders did not…