Emperor Xiaozhao of Northern Qi dies from injuries suffered while hunting; his brother succeeds him as Emperor Wucheng.

Taiyuan, the secondary capital of Northern Qi, is rebuilt in 562; it will become a center of Buddhism.

The kingdom of Silla, in 562, expels from the Korean peninsula the Japanese, who had established a foothold on the coast in the fourth century.

The Avars, still in the pay of Constantinople, push west until, in 562, they meet the enlarged Frankish kingdom at the Elbe.

King Sigebert I repels an attack on Austrasia by the Avars at Regensburg.

A fifty years' truce between Persia and Rome is finally negotiated, probably at the end of 561; Constantinople agrees to pay an annual tribute of thirty thousand solidi (gold coins); in return, the Persians renounce all claim to Lazica, an important bulwark against northern invaders, and undertake not to persecute their Christian subjects.

Justinian has thus maintained his eastern provinces virtually intact in spite of the vigorous offensives of the Persian king, so his policy on this front can hardly be described as a failure.

The treaty also regulates trade between Rome and Persia, since rivalry between the two great powers has always had its economic aspects, focused primarily upon the silk trade.

Raw silk reaches Constantinople through Persian intermediaries, either by a land route leading from China through Persia or by the agency of Persian merchants in the Indian Ocean.

The need to break this Persian monopoly had led Justinian to search for new routes and new peoples to serve as intermediaries: in the south, the Ethiopian merchants of the kingdom of Axum; in the north, the peoples around the Crimea and in the Caucasian kingdom of Lazica, as well as the Turks of the steppes beyond the Black Sea.

Other valuable commodities are exchanged in the Black Sea region, including textiles, jewelry, and wine from East Rome for the furs, leather, and slaves offered by the barbarians; yet, silk remains the commodity of prime interest.

It is fortunate, then, that before 561, East Roman agents had smuggled silkworms from China into Constantinople, establishing a silk industry that will liberate the empire from dependence on Persia and become one of the medieval Greek empire's most important economic operations.

The Avars and Bulgars had reached the Lower Danube in 562: it is most likely in this year that Bayan becomes their supreme Khagan, as his predecessor, the Kutrigur Khan Zabergan has died.

As allies of the Empire, the Avars have obtained a grant of gold to crush other nomads—the Sabirs, Utigurs, Kutrigurs and Saragurs—in the lands later known as Ukraine, a task they accomplish to the emperor's satisfaction.

Bayan's Avars now exact the renewal of the alliance, increased pay and a land in which to live.

The Avars had joined the raiders in 561 but the Empire buys them off in 562 with an annual subsidy.

However, the Slavs, and later the Bulgars, will eventually succeed in settling within the Roman provinces, and failure to keep them out is one of the criticisms sometimes made against Justinian.

Belisarius stands trial for corruption in Constantinople, possibly with Procopius acting as praefectus urbi.

He is found guilty and sent to prison.

Justinian's generals have conquered Italy in a series of campaigns waged from 540.

Pockets of resistance, reinforced by Franks and Alemanni who had invaded Italy in 553, linger on until 562, by which time Constantinople is in control of the whole of the country.

Justinian pardons Belisarius in 563, ordering his release from prison and the restoration of his the properties and honors.

He permits the great general to live in obscurity and awards him a "veteran" pension.

The new Hagia Sophia with its numerous chapels and shrines, octagonal dome and mosaics, and a price tag of twenty thousand pounds of gold, becomes the center and most visible monument of Eastern Orthodoxy.

Bayan had eyed the plain of Moesia, just south of the Lower Danube, what would become northern Bulgaria, as his promised land, but, as Constantinople is adamant the Avars should not in any case cross the river, Bayan and his horde in 563 ride around the northern Carpathians to Germany, where they are soundly stemmed along the river Elbe by the Frankish king Sigebert I of Austrasia.

This defeat induces them to retrace their path to the Lower Danube region.