ABSTRACT
At the end of 536, Belisarius, with much fanfare, captured the city of Rome, punctuating the line of successes stretching from his destruction of the Vandals in 534 to the capitulation of Ravenna and Belisarius’ triumphant return to Constantinople in 540. However, the city had fallen back into the hands of the resurgent Ostrogoths under their king Totila in December of 546. In the following spring of 547, Belisarius, who had himself returned to Italy in 544, exploited an opportunity presented by Gothic operations in the south of Italy by entering and hastily refortifying the virtually deserted city and then thwarted Totila’s attempts to dislodge him. Procopius of Caesarea tells the story together with its sequel, the Gothic siege of Perusia (Perugia), as part of a self-contained narrative in chapters 24–26 of book seven of the Wars.
