Count Belisarius

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Count Belisarius is a 1938 novel by the British writer Robert Graves about the life of the Eastern Roman commander Belisarius from the 6th century .

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In the 6th century Gaul , Hispania and Italy were in the hands of the barbarians . The Roman Empire survived only in the east, besieged by enemies on all sides. For a short time one man reversed this decline, fought against Persians , Goths, and Vandals, and even recaptured Rome - Belisarius, horseman, archer, swordsman, and military genius who descended from the barbarians himself but earned the title of last of the Romans ("Last of the Romans") earned.

Graves, who already brought classical Rome to life with I, Claudius and Claudius the God , created nothing less than a great achievement about the Byzantine Empire with this epic novel about its greatest general.

The story is told by a eunuch , who as a slave of Antonina serves an earlier dancer and prostitute from the circle of the companions of the Empress Theodora (the so gleefully in the bizarre secret story ( "Historia Arcana") by Procopius of Caesarea described ).

After her dethronement, Theodora I was forced to marry her old confidante Antonina to the great general Belisarius in order to be sure to manipulate this man, whose fame and valor made him appear in the eyes of some as a rival of the Emperor Justinian I himself .

Based on numerous authentic sources, Graves' novel tells a compelling story of victories against all odds and a doomed marriage. Jealousy, suspicion and hypocrisy lie at the heart of the novel. When Justinian and Theodora plan an attack and an intrigue, political and religious interest groups flood against them and despite all the brilliance, honor and loyalty of Belisarius, his fate is inevitable in their hands.

In an introduction to a new edition, the writer Lindsey Davis stated that when the novel was first published in 1938, as it is today, the description of the siege of a European civilization was appropriate, and that Winston Churchill told Robert Graves at the time that it would not be possible for him to put this novel down.

German translation

The novel was published in German for the first time in 1939 under the title "Belisarius von Byzanz" (Leipzig: Paul List Verlag), from 1962 under the name "Belisarius, the glorious" (Stuttgart: Steingrüben Verlag).

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