Justinian I was the greatest emperor Rome ever had

>it's a cities are places and not collectives thread
Do you guys even evacuation of Athens in 480?

This

>Justinian was a shit-tier Emperor
>the Empire might have withstood the Arab invasions.
>Justinian was shit because he couldn't see the future
meme reasoning

Justinian may not have been the best, but that is way too harsh.He spent a lot of money on his grand projects, but a lot of that was investment in infrastructure, which is crucial for keeping an empire running. Not to mention that these sort of mega projects are great for a city's economy.

And he took a lot from the Imperial coffers, but he was also the one to fill them in the first place. His extensive reworking of the tax system (with John the Cappadocian) is what let him spend money on the military and infrastructure.

Also, he did indeed rely a lot on the people around him for their specialties. So does every ruler.

Overall, Justinian was an Emperor that lead his country as best he could, and tried to return it to it's former glory in the best we he saw. During this, he steered the empire through several crises that could, and probably should, have broken it, like the burning of the city by the Demes, or the outbreak of the black plague that killed a quarter of Constantinople. These, and especially the plague, contributed much more to the fragility of the empire than any policy of Justinian might have done on the long term.
And despire all this, at his death, the empire was in much better shape then it was when Justinian took the purple.

Can we agree that Justinian and Theodora were the old world's Hottest Power Couple?

Read what I said: even back when he undertook his renovatio imperii, the idea was outlandish and fantastical. It was literally nothing but an autistic fantasy, for many of the places he conquered were not particularly worth the effort.

For example, parts of Italy and Iberia? He wasted so much resources subjugating them and over-stretching not just the treasury but the manpower for garrisoning those useless backwaters at a time when the Empire was not particularly doing well to begin with, what with the Sassanids and the barbarian migrations. The people resented the high costs of his little pet projects, and - I cannot put it more plainly than this - he OVERSTRETCHED the resources of the Empire to follow an unrealistic fantasy.

That is a bad Emperor.

And he gets negative points in my book for stressing so much the idea of re-conquering, but never actually doing any fighting or even travelling with the armies, unlike other Roman/Byzantine Emperors such as Aurelian or Basil II.

For the empire

That's, like, five different joke setups without the punchlines.

The best emperors were the unknown ones. The one's who just went on, did nothing dramatic except progressing and for whom we know little...

Guy is only famous because his conquest made him the last emperor that was relevant to western world.

it was all east from then on out

In retrospect Italy was not worth the effort yes, but you have to consider the fact that Italy came directly after a quick conquest of N. Africa. It was expected that Italy would go the same way, and did for the early parts of the war. No one expected it to become so brutal and prolonged.
Furthermore, consider as well that some of the territories Justinian conquered did indeed stick around for quite a while; iirc there are still some parts of Southern Italy that speak Greek
IE Justinian (though clearly overstretched himself and his empire) certainly wasnt a complete failure.