# Justinian's Reconquest Destroyed More of Rome Than the Barbarians

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-jeremy-ryan-slate-show-1102005/justinian-s-reconquest-destroyed-more-of-rome-than-the-barbarians
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-jeremy-ryan-slate-show-1102005/justinian-s-reconquest-destroyed-more-of-rome-than-the-barbarians.md
Podcast: [The Jeremy Ryan Slate Show](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-jeremy-ryan-slate-show-1102005)
Published: 2026-07-06T11:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jeremyryanslateshow/episodes/Justinians-Reconquest-Destroyed-More-of-Rome-Than-the-Barbarians-e3mdg0p
Audio file: https://anchor.fm/s/11533929c/podcast/play/123174361/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-6-22%2F428418347-48000-2-4fb87bb0f20bdc40.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-jeremy-ryan-slate-show-1102005/episodes/justinian-s-reconquest-destroyed-more-of-rome-than-the-barbarians
Duration seconds: 1867

## Resource

Rome wasn't killed by its enemies. It was killed by a rescue. Everyone knows the fall of Rome — 476, the last emperor, the barbarian king, the lights going out. Almost nobody knows what happened when the Eastern Empire under Justinian tried to take Italy back. The Gothic Wars of 535-554 emptied the peninsula. Milan — one of the great cities of the north — was leveled, its men slaughtered, its women and children enslaved. Rome itself was besieged over and over. The aqueducts were cut for the first time in the city's history. And the Plague of Justinian rode the exact same roads Belisarius had reopened for trade, killing perhaps a third of the Mediterranean world. By the time Justinian declared victory in 554, Rome held maybe 50,000 people — down from hundreds of thousands under Theodoric. There was almost no one left to govern. So the Pope started doing it. Not because God willed it — because no one else was left standing. This is Episode 3 of the "Life After the Fall of Rome" series. We're going to follow the 20-year kill chain from Justinian's decision to reconquer Italy through Belisarius's early successes, the sieges, Milan's destruction, the plague, the Gothic king Totila appealing directly to Italians against their supposed "liberators," and the arrival of the Lombards in 568 who found an Italy that 20 years of Byzantine reconquest had prepared for them. The barbarians took the crown in 476. The Eastern Empire took the civilization in 554. And the pattern is closer to an operating manual for every rescue operation that's ever been launched: when a government tries to restore something that no longer exists, it doesn't bring back the past — it destroys what's left. If you're new, start with Episode 1 ("Rome Didn't Fall — Here's What Actually Happened") and Episode…

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## Transcript

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