Justinian I

Justinian I ruled the Roman Empire from 527 to 565, driven by a singular ambition: renovatio imperii, the restoration of the Empire. He dispatched his general Belisarius to crush the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa, then turned on the Ostrogothic Kingdom, retaking Dalmatia, Sicily, Italy, and Rome after more than half a century of Gothic rule. His prefect Liberius seized the south of the Iberian Peninsula, establishing the province of Spania. These western campaigns brought the Mediterranean back under Roman control and added over a million solidi to the imperial treasury. In the east, Justinian fought the Sasanian Empire twice - the second war partly triggered by his western adventures. He also subdued the Tzani along the Black Sea, a people Rome had never ruled. His reign produced the Corpus Juris Civilis, a unified rewriting of Roman law still foundational to civil law in many countries, and sponsored a cultural flowering that gave the world the Hagia Sophia.