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136 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE officials. Justinian did what he could to restore the pros- perity of Byzantine Africa, and embellished Carthage with a number of new buildings. When Justinian undertook his war against the Vandals, the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy was ruled by a Reconquest young king whose mother was well disposed of Italy toward Justinian and who allowed Belisarius to use Sicily as a base of operations against Africa. Her son had disgusted the Gothic chiefs by crying when his teacher whipped him; but the manly education, which they insisted upon giving him instead, had the effect of making him toe tough ; and his vicious ways caused his death a few months after the Vandal king surrendered to Belisarius. The queer mother succeeded in marrying the next candidate for the throne, her cousin, but presently he had her strangled. This gave Justinian an excuse for declaring war. Belisarius helped by the Franks, whom Justinian's clever diplomacy induced to invade Provence and the north of Italy, and by another Byzantine general who conquered Dalmatia, bur hampered by Narses, whom Justinian sent out for a tim( with another army to spy upon him, won a series of sue cesses from 535 to 540 culminating in the capitulation o Ravenna. But then under a new king, Totila, the Goth, renewed the struggle, and by 551 had reconquered most o Italy and had seized Sicily, Sardinia, arid Corsica as well Finally the now aged Narses defeated and killed Totila ii 552, and by 555 resistance was practically at an end, an< the Franks and Alamanni, who had taken advantage of th disorder to ravage Italy, had been driven out. But Rhsetia Noricum, and Pannonia were lost to the Empire, and in 56 the Lombards began their successful invasions and partiz conquest of Italy. Meanwhile Justinian had no thought c setting up again a Western emperor; Italy, like Africa, wa ruled by an exarch subordinate to Constantinople, and th days of the Roman senate were over. This Exarchate < Ravenna, though soon greatly reduced in size, lasted for long time after th,e Lombards entered Italy. Ravenrl itself did not fall until 751, and the Byzantine Empire he