[Intro screen with music]
A comet crosses the sky.
For 40 days and 40 nights, it lingers, growing brighter, longer, then, at last, fading from view.
It's an omen for empire.
It's course is the course that all empires take.
In Byzantium, sages debate its meaning, but its meaning would soon become all too clear.
Hunnish and Bulgar raiders had let loose a storm like never before seen.
Their incursion into Scythia Minor and Thrace had grown.
City after city was sacked.
Twice, Romans generals were defeated in the field
and the horde push all the way up to the Anastasian Wall,
a bare 40 miles from Constantinople.
Crops were left unattended,
massive portions of the population were enslaved,
the economy of the nearby provinces was in ruin,
tax revenue had dropped and infrastructure would take years to rebuild,
but this was only a temporary threat.
Barbarians retreat, raids come and go.
And though this one was of the likes not seen in decades,
it'd only serve as a prelude to the events that would follow.
For the real threat was in the South.
A border dispute had flared up and had become an open conflict
amongst client tribes of the Byzantine and the Persians
These two great empires weren't at war
but the ancient world stood on a knife's edge.
Justinian had to send somebody to pacify the situation,
but Belisarius was still in Italy
and with him were many of the empire's best troops.
So he sent a man named Sitas
who had been in the region ever since the first Persian war
where Belisarius had won fame at the battle of Dara
and, at first, all went well for Sitas.
He tried to win the people to his side and it worked
A tribe known to the Romans as the 'Aspetiani'
secretly sent envoys to Sitas to plead with him to let them remain free
if, on the day of the battle when he went to put down the rebellion,
they would abandon the rebel border tribes and join his force.
Eagerly, he accepted,
thinking that this would be a route to a bloodless victory
When the Aspetiani switched sides
it would demoralize the other rebels
and when they saw how great a force they now faced
might even persuade them to come to terms
and so he had his promise inscribed on tablets of clay
and sent by messenger to the Aspetiani.
Then, he readied his army for the battle.
But on the way to confront the rebel forces,
some of his outriders encountered a small group of Aspetiani
and slew nearly all,
either not knowing of the bargain that had been made
or not understanding just who this group of rebels was.
But some of these men escaped
and made it back to their tribe.
Shortly thereafter, Sitas cornered the rebels
and prepared to fight them in the blasted Armenian hills.
But the messengers he had sent had taken other roads
and his army had outpaced them.
So, no tablets offering peace,
and no promises of safe passage ever reached the Aspetiani,
only news of the death of their comrades and their kin.
And so the Aspetiani stayed with the rebels,
their resolve to fight now insurmountable
on account of the betrayal they thought had occurred.
The battle was fierce and it was personal.
The rough terrain didn't allow for the elegant movement of armies,
but instead, split the fight into a thousand small actions,
settled by bravery and skill at arms.
And, in this chaos, Sitas was isolated
and in his isolation, he was recognized by the Armenians
and struck down.
And so Justinian next sent a man named Bouzes
to deal with the rebel Armenians
and Bouzes invited them to treat with him,
asking that they send their powerful men to speak about terms.
The Armenians were distrustful of the Romans,
but there was one among them,
a man named John, who knew Bouzes
and trusted him,
and so convinced the rebels that they should ride out and treat with him
but when they arrived,
John's son-in-law saw that their meeting point was surrounded by the Roman army,
and so begged John to leave.
The rest of the group heard John's son-in-law and left.
Only John remained.
But for reasons that is still not clear,
Bouzes slew John.
And when this became known, John's son-in-law went to Khosrow,
the energetic and able King of the Persians, and pleaded that he join the war.
And, in truth, the war may have already had his hand in it,
as ever since Vitiges told him of Belisarius been tied up in the West,
he had wanted a reason to attack the Byzantines
and now he had it.
The great king marshalled his forces
and drove into Byzantine territory.
But rather than savage conquest, he had a better plan.
After all, siege was such a terrible waste of men and material.
Instead, he would drive his massive force up to a town,
hop in with his envoys,
and let them know that at the low, low price of a huge amount of gold,
he wouldn't burn anything,
or loot anybody,
or kill anyone.
And, for the most part, the towns agreed to this deal,
which seems like a far better bargain than being sacked
after attempting a defense they couldn't possibly sustain.
And this method of bargaining freed Khosrow to move north like lightning,
collecting from town after town on the way,
until he reached Antioch.
Here, the city decided to resist.
Khosrow's force rapidly overwhelmed the defenses,
but, cleverly, he left one gate to the city open and unguarded.
Seeing a chance for escape,
the entire Byzantine garrison took off for the exit Khosrow had left them as soon as things started to go south.
And here, Khosrow showed he wasn't playing around.
He captured all the citizens,
stole all the wealth, and then leveled the place to the ground
At this point, Justinian decided it was time to treat with Khosrow,
who asked for thousands of pounds of gold
and an annual tribute to go away.
But Khosrow wasn't done.
Until messengers came back with his gold,
he was gonna continue his raid-of-the-Byzantines party.
But the first on his to-do list was to take a lovely swim in the Mediterranean
to show just how far the Persian empire had come,
just like the Persian heroes of legend.
When he was done with his brief dip,
he commenced Part 2 of Operation Stick-it-to-Justinian.
In the next town he came to,
he actually paid for a chariot race in the hippodrome
but stipulated that the green rider had to win,
because, after all, as we all know,
Justinian was a super fan of the blues.
After this master class in trollsmanship,
messengers finally arrived from Justinian,
agreeing to the terms.
But Khosrow decided,
"You know, why let a little agreement get in the way of a good extortion campaign?"
and proceeded to do the same thing he had been doing
basically all the way back home.
Although, in Part 3 of his Stick-it-to-Justinian' master plan,
when the citizen of Kari came out to offer him money to go away,
Khosrow was like "Hey, hey, hey, don't sweat it bros,
you're pagans, we're cool," and sent them their money back.
Finally, he thought he'd take a shot at capturing Dara along the way,
but in the end, was repulsed
and settled for, as usual, a bit of cash to keep moving.
Oh, and you remember all of those the captives that he took at Antioch?
Well, he was never able to sell them back to the Romans,
so instead of selling them into slavery,
like basically any other ancient ruler would have done,
he had a different plan.
You see, before razing Antioch to the ground,
he had his engineers take copious notes on how the city was laid out
and when they got back to Persia,
he had them create a new city for the Antiochians
exactly like the old one
and he named it 'Weh Antiok Khusrau'
or, literally, Khosrow's better version of Antioch.
Style points.
But as hilarious as all this was from the Persian side of things,
for the Romans, this exposed the many of the weaknesses underlying their mighty empire.
Weaknesses that caused their allies to begin to doubt.
Soon, Lazica, the province just south of the Caucasus mountains,
tried to switch to the Persian's side
and war was on again.
but, finally, Belisarius was back.
He organized a raid into Persia
and, although not a resounding success quite like many of his other endeavors,
it was successful enough to force the Persians to withdraw from Lazica for the season.
The following year, though, the Great King returned.
This time, Khosrow was aiming at Jerusalem.
He arrayed before him a mighty host,
far greater than that he rode with before,
and began to harry the borders of Palestine.
Though Belisarius has done the impossible time and time again,
this was probably the end.
When he had defied the odds, he had always found an advantage that he could magnify --
strong walls, more disciplined troops --
But now, he faced an empire with soldiers hardened by war:
well-disciplined, well-equipped, led by energetic and capable men.
He faced a force beyond anything he could muster
and yet, he resolved to fight, though it would be his life.
And so he gathered men to him, all he could rally,
this would be a fight like no other
and if he were to die, it would be in service to the empire.
If he were to die, it would be with glory.
And each day, the Persians drew nearer.
Each day, the horde of the Great King moved inextricably closer.
Then they stopped -- and they withdrew.
Some may say that it was because they feared the great name Belisarius,
but it was actually because of something much darker.
Whispers. A horror on the periphery. A killer of men.
[Ending screen with music]