Justin II
Justin II lost the Balkans and much of Italy, started a war with Persia he could not fund, and went mad. He was the nephew of Justinian and took the throne in 565 by moving faster than the other candidates on the night his uncle died, and he inherited an empire that looked larger than it was. Justinian's reconquests of Africa, Italy and southern Spain had been financed by taxation and by paying off the empire's enemies, and the treasury was empty, the plague had killed a great share of the population, and the armies were dispersed across the Mediterranean. Justin's first decisions were popular and disastrous. He stopped the subsidies — to the Avars, to the Persians, to everyone — announcing that the empire would no longer buy peace, which was a moral position without an army behind it. The Lombards crossed into Italy in 568 and took most of the north within a few years, undoing twenty years of war in a decade. The Avars and Slavs pushed into the Balkans. The Persian war he began in 572 over Armenia went badly, and the fall of the fortress of Dara in 573 after a long siege is what reportedly broke him: the sources describe him biting his attendants, being wheeled through the palace on a throne with wheels, and having organ music played to calm him. His wife Sophia governed, made a truce with Persia at a very high price, and had Tiberius appointed Caesar in 574. Justin died in 578.
- Lived: 520 CE – 578 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state
