Battle of Mons Lactarius

Battle of Mons Lactarius
	Part of the Gothic War
	; Battle on the slopes of the Mount Vesuvius. Depiction by Alexander Zick, 1890.
Date	October 552 or early 553
Location	Monti Lattari, Campania, Italy
Result	Byzantine victory
Belligerents
Byzantine Empire	Ostrogothic Kingdom
Commanders and leaders
Justinian I; Narses	Teia †

The Battle of Mons Lactarius (also known as Battle of the Vesuvius) took place in 552 or 553 AD during the

Gothic War waged on behalf of Justinian I against the Ostrogoths in Italy

.

After the

Nuceria Alfaterna. The battle lasted two days, and Teia was killed in the fighting. Ostrogothic power in Italy was eliminated, and many of the remaining Ostrogoths went north and (re)settled in south Austria. After the battle, Italy was again invaded, this time by the Franks

, but they too were defeated and the peninsula was, for a brief period of time, reintegrated into the Empire. This brief period of Roman rule was brought to an end by the invasion of the Lombards, a Germanic tribe, in 568.

Sources

History of the Later Roman Empire by J. B. Bury, from Lacus Curtius