He Couldn’t Stop Himself: The Codex of Justinian

When Hilderic, the ageing son of a Vandal monarch and an imperial princess, well disposed towards Justinian, was deposed by a less biddable cousin, the emperor launched an invasion of North Africa. A series of Gothic kings fought imperial armies to a standstill as the war settled down into decades of thankless campaigning – Procopius was long dead when the last Ostrogothic hold-outs surrendered in the 550s. Less gripping than Procopius’ biographical slanders, less accessible than the tactical minutiae of the emperor’s wars, the legal reforms of Justinian’s reign are nonetheless the most important thing about it.

Source: www.lrb.co.uk