In the sixth century’s long dusk, when Constantinople bore the last weight of Roman claim and Rome itself had become an echo of empire after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, one man held the fragile cord of authority: Belisarius, general of the Eastern Roman Empire, servant of Emperor Justinian, and the last great captain of an age that once commanded the world. Guided and sometimes defied by Empress Theodora, bound in loyalty to his wife Antonina, he stood between order and ruin — between a fading ideal and the chaos that pressed at its borders. From the deserts of Africa to the harbours of Sicily, from the shattered forums of Naples and Ravenna to the ashes of Rome, Belisarius fought the long Gothic War — against the restless brilliance of Totila, the defiant Ostrogoth king, and amid the rival ambitions of Narses, the emperor’s calculating eunuch-commander. Each victory was both triumph and warning: Italy reclaimed, yet ruined; empire restored, yet hollowed by exhaustion. This book is a work of narrative historical nonfiction — a sweeping account of war, loyalty, and the twilight of empire. Told with the precision of history and the force of epic storytelling, it reveals a man who fought for duty long after glory had lost its meaning. He defeated Persians, Vandals, and Goths. He restored cities, toppled kings, and carried the Roman eagle farther than any man since Caesar. Yet his greatest battles were fought not against enemies, but against envy, treachery, and the slow corruption of imperial power. In Belisarius — The Last Roman , Ben K. Collingwood brings to life the last great age of the Byzantine Empire — the splendor of Justinian’s Constantinople, the peril of the Gothic War, and the moral solitude of a general who remained steadfast when the empire he served began to decay.