Emperor Justinian I pardons Belisarius; he orders his release from prison, and restores his properties and honours. He permits the general to live in obscurity, and gives him a veterans' pension.
Tauredunum event:[4] A mountain landslide into the Rhone river destroys a fort and two villages, and creates a tsunami in Lake Geneva. The wave which reaches Lausanne is thirteen metres high, and eight metres high by the time it hits Geneva. Describing the event, Marius Aventicensis writes that the tsunami "devastated very old villages with their men and cattle, it even destroyed many sacred places", and swept away "the bridge in Geneva, windmills and men".[5]
Emperor Justin II, facing an empty treasury, breaks the treaty with the Gepids that has existed since 565. King Alboin of the Lombards makes an alliance with the Avars under Bayan I, at the expense of tough conditions. They demand a tenth of the Lombards' cattle and half of the war booty.
A poet from Italy named Venantius Fortunatus arrives at the Merovingian court at Metz. With a strong grasp of traditional Roman poetry, Fortunatus impresses and entertains the Frankish royalty and aristocracy. The success of a Latin poet in Francia suggests that Roman culture persisted well after the Roman Empire disintegrated in Gaul in the late 5th century.[11]
Spring – The Lombards, led by King Alboin, cross the Julian Alps. Their invasion of Northern Italy is almost unopposed; withered Byzantine forces, that remain in the Po Valley and are based at Ravenna, are no match for the overwhelming Lombard incursion. Residents of the Italian countryside flee at the Lombards' approach. Some retreat to the barrier islands along the shore of the Northern Adriatic Sea, where they establish permanent settlements: the nascent city of Venice.[15]
The Avar Khaganate attempts to expel Kutrigurs who had fled the Göktürks, ordering them to go south of the Sava River; those who leave generally fall under rule of the Turks.
^Wickham, Chris (2005). Framing the Early Middle Ages. p. 175.
^Connor, Steve (2014-07-07). "Our explosive past is written in the Antarctic ice". i. London. p. 17.
^Charibert I, Edward James, The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity, ed. Oliver Nicholson, (Oxford University Press, 2018), 317.
^Isidore, chapter 46; translated by Donini and Ford, p. 22
^Traditional date as given in William J. Langer, ed. An Encyclopedia of World History
^John of Biclaro, Chronicle 10. Translated by Kenneth Baxter Wolf, Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain, second edition (Liverpool: University Press, 1990), p. 60