The Gothic War in Italy against the Ostrogoths has been going badly for the Empire, with the Gothic king Totila having wrested most of the peninsula back from the imperial troops.

In 549, Justinian decides to send a major expeditionary force to Italy with Germanus as its head.

Soon, however, he changes his mind and appoints the patricius Liberius instead, before canceling the expedition altogether.

Gubazes and Dagisthaeus combine their forces in the spring of 549 to destroy Phabrizus's army in a surprise attack; they pursue the survivors into Caucasian Iberia.

In the same summer, they win another victory against a new Persian army, led by Khorianes.

The allies fail, however, to prevent another Persian army from reinforcing Petra, and Dagisthaeus is recalled and replaced by Bessas.

The chariot races held in 549 in the Circus Maximus, the first and largest circus in Rome, are the last ever held.

Totila advances a third time against Rome.

He offers a peace agreement, but this is rejected by the emperor.

Theudigisel is assassinated by a group of conspirators during a banquet in Seville, according to Isidore of Seville, because he "defiled the marriages of very many powerful men by public prostitution".

Gregory of Tours, although he agrees that Theudigisel died during a banquet, records a different tale of his end: in the middle of the feast, the lights were blown out and an unidentified person killed Theudigisel in the dark.

"The Goths had adopted the reprehensible habit of killing out of hand any king who displeased them and replacing him on the throne by someone they preferred," Gregory concludes.

Some Visigothic king lists skip Theudigisel, as well as Agila I, going directly from Theudis to Athanagild.

Gao Huan's son Gao Yang forces Emperor Xiaojing of Eastern Wei to yield the throne to him in 550, ending Eastern Wei and establishing Northern Qi.

As Emperor Wenxuan, Gao Yang adopts a defensive policy towards the hostile northern tribes, building over a thousand miles of wall on the border.

Roman forces in the Balkans follow the Slavic invaders everywhere but do not dare to fight them, because the Slavs are too numerous.

In 550, the Sclaveni reach a point about forty miles (sixty-five kilometers) from Constantinople.

Procopius writes the Secret History around this time.

Covering roughly the same years as the first seven books of the History of Justinian's Wars, it appears to have been written after they were published.

Current consensus generally dates it to 550 or 558, or maybe even as late as 562.

The Secret History reveals an author who had become deeply disillusioned with the emperor Justinian and his wife, Empress Theodora, as well as Belisarius, his former commander and patron, and Antonina, Belisarius' wife.

The anecdotes claim to expose the secret springs of their public actions, as well as the private lives of the emperor, his wife and their entourage.

Justinian is portrayed as cruel, venal, prodigal and incompetent; as for Theodora, the reader is treated to the most detailed and titillating portrayals of vulgarity and insatiable lust combined with shrewish and calculating mean-spiritedness.

Discovered centuries later in the Vatican Library and published by Niccolò Alamanni in 1623 at Lyons, its existence was already known from the Suda, which referred to it as the Anekdota (Latin Anecdota, "unpublished writings").

Justinian appoints Bessas commander (magister militum) of Armenia and entrusts him with the war in Lazica (Georgia).

A pro-Persian revolt breaks out in 550 among the Abasgians, a people that neighbor Lazica to the north.

This provides an opportunity for a high-ranking Lazic noble, called Terdetes, who had quarreled with Gubazes, to betray to the Persians an important fort in the land of the Apsili, a tribe under Lazic suzerainty.

The Apsili retake the fort, but refuse to accept Lazic rule until persuaded to do so by the imperial general John Guzes.

Agila had come to power after the assassination of Theudigisel, who had ruled for less than two years.

However, opposition to his rule soon emerges.

First is …

…the revolt of the city of Córdoba, which Isidore of Seville suggests was due to local Roman Catholics objecting to his Arianism: in his account, Isidore mentions that Agila defiled the church of a local saint, Acisclus, by drenching the sepulcher "with the blood of the enemy and of their pack-animals", and attributes the death of Agila's son in the conflict—along with the majority of his army, and the royal treasury—to "the agency of the saints".

(Isidore of Seville, History of the Goths, chapter 47.

Translation by Guido Donini and Gordon B. Ford, Isidore of Seville's History of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi, second revised edition (Leiden: E.J.

Brill, 1970), pp.

21.

Heather dates the beginning of this conflict to 550 (Peter Heather, The Goths (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp.

278).

Agila himself retreats to …