ABSTRACT
The Vandal Wars covers Belisarius’ greatest victory. The campaign against the Vandals was pressed by Justinian himself against the judgment of everyone else, if we follow Procopius; yet it was crowned with amazing success and brought Belisarius to a dazzling peak of fame-the Vandal ‘triumph’ in AD 534, when Gelimer the Vandal king walked in chains behind his captor, and the consulship in the following year, whose opportunities Belisarius exploited to so great an extent that Justinian himself grew alarmed. In these years Procopius was close to Belisarius and accompanied him throughout. Not only therefore did he have personal knowledge of the great campaign, but he had not yet felt the disillusion that set in in the 540s. The two books of the Vandal Wars should then mark a high peak in Procopius’ own experience and in his writing of the wars of reconquest.
