In the 6th century, as the Western Roman Empire lay in ruins, one man stood between the Eastern Empire and total collapse. Flavius Belisarius was a military genius who reconquered North Africa, Italy, and even marched to the gates of the Persian capital. But his greatest battle was not against barbarian kings or the Sassanid Shah; it was for survival in the glittering, treacherous court of Constantinople, under the paranoid gaze of Emperor Justinian. This episode charts the tragic arc of Belisarius's career, from his stunning victories that briefly restored the Roman Mediterranean to the calculated humiliations inflicted by a ruler who feared his own champion. We explore the Sack of Rome by the Ostrogoths, a disaster that unfolded partly due to imperial jealousy, and the final, shocking spectacle of the empire's last great general being publicly st ...