Gothic War (535–554)
Aftermath

The Gothic War is often viewed as a pyrrhic victory, which drained the Byzantine Empire of resources that might have been employed against more serious threats in western Asia and the Balkans. In the east, pagan Slavs and Kutrigurs raided and devastated the Byzantine provinces south of the Danube from 517. A century later Dalmatia, Macedonia, Thrace and most of Greece were lost to Slavs and Avars. Some recent historians have taken a different view of Justinian's western campaigns. Warren Treadgold placed greater blame for the vulnerability of the Empire in the late 6th century on the Plague of Justinian in 540–541, which is estimated to have killed up to a quarter of the population at the height of the Gothic War, sapping the Empire of manpower and tax revenues needed to complete the campaign more swiftly. No ruler, no matter how wise, could possibly have anticipated the plague, he argues, which would have been disastrous for the empire and Italy, regardless of the attempt to reconquer Italy. However, as a result of Rome having been under attack constantly during the war, the deaths not caused by the plague continued to rise.

In Italy, the war devastated the urban society that was supported by a settled hinterland. The great cities were abandoned as Italy fell into a long period of decline. The impoverishment of Italy and the drain on the empire made it impossible for the Byzantines to hold their gains. Only three years after the death of Justinian in 565, the mainland Italian territories fell into the hands of the Germanic Lombards. The Exarchate of Ravenna, a band of territory that stretched across central Italy to the Tyrrhenian Sea and south to Naples, along with parts of southern Italy, were the only remaining imperial holdings. After the Gothic Wars, the Empire would entertain no more serious ambitions in the West. Rome remained under imperial control until the Exarchate of Ravenna was conquered by the Lombards in 751. Byzantine influence persisted in some coastal areas of southern Italy until the late 11th century, while the interior was ruled by Lombard dukes based at Benevento and later also at Salerno and Capua.

The widespread destruction of Italy in the war, harsh Gothic and Byzantine reprisals of their opponents' supporters, and heavy Byzantine taxation led the Italian populace to shift allegiances: instead of loyalty to Empire, their identities were increasingly tied to religion, family and city instead. In the long sweep of Italian history, the unified Italy of the Romans, and later the Goths, was broken up permanently; this remained the case until the unification of Italy in the 19th century.
oulipo:avoid_letter[t], language:response_language[Dutch]