The Emperor Justinian (r.527-565 AD) dominated the last century of Roman antiquity. His great achievements and far-reaching failures transformed the Roman Empire and the Mediterranean world. This class will introduce you to Justinian and his remarkable wife, the Empress Theodora, to his greatest general, Belisarius and his beloved wife Antonina, and to their historian, Procopius of Caesarea. Through illustrated lectures using surviving written, artistic and architectural sources explore Justinian's desire to restore the Roman Empire in the Barbarian West, his relations with Sassanid Persia, the often violent religious controversies of his age, and the impact of the great plague which swept the Roman world in the 540s AD. Was Justinian a visionary or a tyrant? How far was his imperial glory-hunting a direct cause of the 'fall' of the Eastern Roman Empire in the seventh century? Lecture style with question and answer time.