A warm, pleasant summer breeze swept across the great harbor of Constantinople.

It was just a few days after the summer solstice and the sun hung high in the sky.

Standing beside the docks, the patriarch of Constantinople, the highest religious official in the city,

shouted out a blessing in Greek.

The notes of his prayer and the other sounds, belching forth from the harbor floated off into the breeze.

Swords, spears and shields clanged off armor as thousands of men jostled together, waiting to board a fleet of hundreds of ships.

Requests, commands and questions in Latin, Greek, Bulgar, Syriac, and a half dozen other languages filled the air.

Carters and porters carried all the supplies the men would need on their expedition through the streets to the docks.

They loaded thousands of loaves of bread and four-eye filled with wine and olive oil, arrows, spare weapons, and more onto the ships.

Thousands of men filed up the gangways onto the waiting ships.

Their booted feet and the hooves of their horses thudded on the wooden decks.

Amidst all this activity, one man just watched the proceedings.

He was dressed in rich purple robes of the finest silk.

The summer sunlight glinted off the golden diet M on his forehead.

His name was Justinian.

It was his will that this fleet and army go forth.

First Africa, then Italy, and finally the entirety of what had once been the Western Roman Empire would return to a state of perfect imperial unity.

The barbarian kingdom, the vandals in Africa, the Austro-Goths in Italy, the Visigoths in Spain, the Franks in Gaul, would all be humbled by the might of a resurgent empire.

That was Justinian's program.

The patriarch of Constantinople finished his blessing.

The expedition was ready to move.

The year was 533.

...