In the year 531 AD the late Roman (Byzantine) general Flavious Belisarius married a prostitute named Antonina. Though little known in the west, Belisarius was perhaps the noblest person ever to lead great armies and is considered to be one of the ten - some would argue three - most successful commanders in history.Belisarius loved and was faithful to Antonina their whole lives together. Antonina loved him yet engaged in a ten year affair with their godson. They accompanied Belisarius on his military campaigns in which he regained North Africa and Italy for the Emperor Justinian who now resided in Constantinople. She also became the chief confidant of the empress Theodora and acted as her agent in the reconquered lands. In an age when wives might be secluded and without political power, Antonina raised and led an army in Italy and stood a year-long siege in Rome.Regrettably, the historical picture of Antonina has been colored by the hatred for her of Belisarius' adoring but prissy biographer. In this book we see the life of her famous husband through Antonina's realistic eyes, and Antonina, through his. Theirs is a love story worth telling.Antonina "descended from a family of charioteers; and her chastity has been stained with the foulest reproach. Yet she reigned with long and absolute power over the mind of her illustrious husband; and if Antonina disdained the merit of conjugal fidelity, she expressed a manly friendship to Belisarius, whom she accompanied with undaunted resolution in all the hardships and dangers of a military life." Edward Gibbon ... The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"All this can be properly attributed to folly, for it is she who sees that a wife is attractive to her husband and a husband to his wife, that peace reigns in the home and their relationship continues. A husband is laughed at, cuckolded, called a worm and who knows what else when he kisses away the tears of his unfaithful wife, but how much happier it is for him to be thus deceived than to wear himself out with unremitting jealousy, strike a tragic attitude, and ruin everything!"Erasmus of Rotterdam ... In Praise of Folly
About the Author: Paul Kastenellos is a retired news librarian who now writes fantasy and historical fiction. Since the nineteen-fifties he has studied the medieval Byzantine Empire, successor to the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean. Forty years of abstracting news has provided him with a succinct style of writing which flows smoothly from historical narrative to fantasy; and between the underworld of midtown Manhattan in the nineteen fifties, the golden age of Justinian, and the wars and religious disputes of the late eighth century CE. Paul lives with his wife in upstate New York where they built their home by hand forty years ago. His latest book is a novel about the age of Justinian intended to correct the prejudice against certain historical figures by writers of the time. It is both accurate biography and a love story, with an afterword to detail where the novel diverges from the historical record. Recently kastenellos has published a series of non fiction essays on Byzantine history: Byzantium In Bits And Pieces.