Great Military Leaders: Belisarius, Constantine, And Justinian

The greatest military leaders of Byzantium are Belisarius, Constantine, and Justinian. All of these men improved this civilization through masterful strategies, great thinking, and impressive knowledge over predicting the enemies movements before it even occurs. As an example of this would be when Belisarius in 532 B.C put down a group of rebels in Constantinople named the Nika Uprising slaughtering between 20,000 and 30,000 people. But Belisarius wasn’t over once Justinian sent him over to Persia in 533 B.C winning an assortment of huge victories for Byzantium. Another great leader would definitely be Constantine who divided the Roman Empire into two and moving the capital away from Rome and moving it to a newly built city called Constantinople

In 330 B.C Constantine divided the great Roman empire into two parts, the western half and the eastern half. Later in 324 B.C Constantine defeated the forces of licinius, who was the emperor of the east. Once Constantine was emperor of the entire Roman empire he created a new capital of Rooms on behalf of himself and named it constantinople which translates to the city of Constantine. This emperor chose this area as the new capital for two reasons, the first reason is that it was on a peninsula and could be fortified easily. The second reason was that constantinople was on the frontier of the empire so imperial armies can respond more quickly to outside attacks or threats. It is believed that Constantine wanted to create a new city so that he can plant the seeds to the sprouting religion of christianity in a place of a more pleasant environment over the “corrupted capital Rome.” While the eastern empire mostly spoke Greek and worshiped Christ the western empire spoke Latin and worshipped Roman Catholic. For those reasons started the rise of the eastern empire while the western empire started to decline. If it wasn't for Constantine making these ground breaking decisions Byzantium as we know it today would have never

Justian once had a dream of seeing the western and eastern halves of the Roman empires once together again. He may of achieved this amazing feat if it wasn't for him getting the plague. Justinian made the great decision to let Belisarius have full power over the Byzantine army which was a huge improvement on the empire. But Justinian didn't just rule alone during the empire. He had a wife known as Theodore who everyone in the empire had a great respect for. In 532 B.C there was a deadly riot called the Nike riot which I briefly mentioned when I was giving the introduction. It was a week long riot consisting of the burning of half of Istanbul and leaving over 20,000 people dead. There was a riot much like this in the hippodrome where they were rioting over some conflicts in the horse racing. Justinian was about to leave in shame and shambles because they started to assaulting the palace, until his wife reminded him of how hard he worked to become emperor. As she was convinced Justinian to stay as emperor she said this famous quote “Better to wear purple” meaning it was batted to be royal than anything. Justian composed himself back together and ordered the death sentenced on everyone who was rioting. The imperial army came rushing into the hippodrome lead by Belisarius and killed the remaining disturbances. Justinian died 565 B.C through old adage just a few weeks before Belisarius died. Justinian later