Before the end of the year
the reconquest was complete. Africa was once more and in reality a
province of the empire, and offered an excellent base of operations
for the conquest of Italy, now to be undertaken.
In the summer of 535, eighteen months later, Justinian began the great
war against the Goths, the opportunity for which was offered him by
the murder of Amalasuntha, and the result of which was to be the
re-establishment of the empire in Italy. Rightly understood the true
service of Theodoric--and it was a real and a precious service--was
that the thirty years of settled government and peace which he had
given Italy had prepared the way for the reconquest.
That reconquest occupied five years. It was begun with an attack upon
Sicily and proceeded northward by way of Naples and Rome to Ravenna,
with the fall of which it was achieved. From a purely strategical
point of view Belisarius was wrong to attack Sicily first and to carry
the campaign from south to north; he should have attacked Ravenna
first, and from the sea, and thus possessed himself of the key of
Italy, and this especially as his base was Constantinople.
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