Artabanes

He served in Africa, where he won great fame by killing the rebel general Guntharic and restoring the province to imperial allegiance.

[1] In 538/539, Artabanes, at the time apparently still a young man, took part in the Armenian conspiracy against Acacius, the proconsul of First Armenia, whose heavy taxes and cruel behaviour was greatly resented.

According to Procopius, he considered leading his men to join the loyalist imperial garrison that held out at Hadrumetum under Marcentius, but decided to return to Carthage and go on with his plan to assassinate Guntharic.

Such a perfect concealment was achieved, not least thanks to the fact that during both planning and implementation stages of this assassination the communication between the exclusively Armenian conspirators was in their mother tongue, an incomprehensible language for other ethnic elements of the imperial army in Africa.

[7] Upon his return to Carthage, he justified his decision to turn back by insisting that the entire army was needed to quell the insurgents, and urged Guntharic to set forth himself.

At the same time, he conspired with his nephew, Gregory, and a few other of his Armenian bodyguards to murder the usurper (although Corippus suggests that it was the praetorian prefect Athanasius who was the real mastermind of the plot).

On the eve of the army's departure in early May, Guntharic hosted a great banquet, and invited Artabanes and Athanasius to share the same couch, a mark of honour.

[8] This deed won him great honour and fame: Praejecta, the widow of Areobindus and niece of Justinian, whom Guntharic was planning to marry, gave him a rich reward, while the emperor confirmed him as magister militum of Africa.

Despite these and his great popularity however, he was unable to achieve his ambition of marrying Praejecta: his wife came to the imperial capital and presented her case to the Empress Theodora.

In order to find out more of their intentions, Germanus met the conspirators in person, while a trusted aide of Marcellus was concealed nearby and listened in.

[13] In 550, Artabanes was appointed magister militum per Thracias and sent to replace the aged senator Liberius in command of an expedition under way against Sicily, which had recently been overrun by the Ostrogoth king Totila.

Artabanes failed to catch up with the expedition before it sailed for Sicily, and his own fleet was driven back and scattered by severe storms in the Ionian Sea.

At Fanum, he ambushed and defeated the advance guard of the Frankish army of Leutharis, which was returning from a plundering expedition into southern Italy and heading back to Gaul.

[17] He then marched south and joined Narses's main force, accompanying him in his campaign against the remaining Frankish army under Butilinus.