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ssss1.A body of local troops raised in the city, who formed part of the imperial guard.

After this final feat of the old general it is sad to learn that his master had not even yet learned to trust him. Four years later there was a futile conspiracy against Justinian, and Belisarius was accused of having known of it. He was disgraced, and put under ward for eight months, before the emperor convinced himself that the charge was false. Restored at last to favour, he lived two years more in possession of his riches and honours,^[14] and died in March 565. His thankless master followed him to the grave before the end of the same year. On the 11th of December 565, Justinian, after living more than seventy years, and reigning for thirty-eight, descended to the tomb.

ssss1.It is now fully recognised, as Finlay and Bury have proved, that there is no truth in the legend that Belisarius was blinded, and became a beggar crying to the people, Date obolum Belisario.

We have spoken of Justinian’s wars, of his buildings, of his financial policy, of his ecclesiastical controversies. But for none of these is he so well remembered as for his activity in yet another sphere. |Legal reforms of Justinian.| It is by his great work of codifying the Roman law, and leaving it in a complete and orderly form as a heritage to the jurists of the modern world that he earned his greatest title to immortality. This was an achievement of the first half of his reign, carried out with the aid of the best lawyers of Constantinople, headed by Tribonian, the able but greedy quaestor against whom the rioters in the ‘Nika’ sedition had raged so furiously.