Belisarius had been recalled in the face of renewed hostilities by the Persians. Following a revolt against the Empire in Armenia in the late 530s and possibly motivated by the pleas of Ostrogothic ambassadors, King Khosrau I broke the "Eternal Peace" and invaded Roman territory in the spring of 540.See for this section Moorhead (1994), pp. 89 ff., Greatrex (2005), p. 488 ff., and especially H. Börm, "Der Perserkönig im Imperium Romanum", in Chiron 36, 2006, pp. 299 ff. He first sacked Beroea and then Antioch (allowing the garrison of 6,000 men to leave the city),J. Norwich, Byzantium: The Early Centuries, 229 besieged Daras, and then went on to attack the Byzantine base in the small but strategically significant satellite kingdom of Lazica near the Black Sea as requested by its discontented king Gubazes, exacting tribute from the towns he passed along his way. He forced Justinian I to pay him 5,000 pounds of gold, plus 500 pounds of gold more each year.
Belisarius had been recalled in the face of renewed hostilities by the Persians. Following a revolt against the Empire in Armenia in the late 530s and possibly motivated by the pleas of Ostrogothic ambassadors, King Khosrau I broke the "Eternal Peace" and invaded Roman territory in the spring of 540.See for this section Moorhead (1994), pp. 89 ff., Greatrex (2005), p 488 ff., and especially H. Börm, "Der Perserkönig im Imperium Romanum", in Chiron 36, 2006, pp. 299 ff. He first sacked Beroea and then Antioch (allowing the garrison of 6,000 men to leave the city),J. Norwich, Byzantium: The Early Centuries, 229 besieged Daras, and then went on to attack the Byzantine base in the small but strategically significant satellite kingdom of Lazica near the Black Sea as requested by its discontented king Gubazes, exacting tribute from the towns he passed along his way. He forced Justinian I to pay him 5,000 pounds of gold, plus 500 pounds of gold more each year.