His uncle Justin had died at the age of seventy-seven, after reigning nine years. His accession had marked a sort of resurrection in eastern affairs. Instead of three emperors, Basiliscus, Zeno, and Anastasius, alike ignominious in their government, unsound in their faith, infamous in their life, and remorselessly tyrannical in their treatment both of Church and State, Justin had crowned an honourable life as a general in the imperial service with a creditable reign, in which his fidelity to the Catholic faith was remarkable. The moment of Justinian's succession was coeval with great changes in the West. By the death of Theodorick, who in his last year had begun the work of active Arian persecution, the great kingdom which he had maintained for a generation seemed on the point of dissolution, through the intrinsic inaptitude for government which his Gothic subjects at once betrayed when let loose from the master's powerful hand. In Africa, moreover, a succession of cruel Vandal persecutors, almost equal to their original, Genseric, had shaken their tenure of the country. At the same time, the Frankish kingdom, strengthened greatly by the conversion of Clovis, was growing in power and extent--a growth not interrupted by his early death in 511, at the age of forty-five.[123] Such was the state of things when Justinian directed the great power which the revenues of the eastern empire enabled him to wield, towards the restoration of that empire, first in Africa, and then in Italy. Later in the same year, 533, in which he addressed to John II. the explicit acknowledgment of his supreme authority with which I began, he despatched his great general Belisarius with 16,000 chosen troops, 6000 of them cavalry, to Carthage. The Vandal ruler Gelimer offered but a feeble and utterly ineffectual resistance. He surrendered himself at Carthage to Belisarius, by the end of the year, and was brought to Constantinople. There Justinian received Belisarius in what was like one of Rome's hundred triumphs, except that the conqueror marched on foot. The booty of the Vandal kings was borne before him, in which were conspicuous the precious things which Genseric had carried away from Rome--the vessels of the temple of Jerusalem. When the captive king was brought into the circus, and saw before him the emperor and countless rows of spectators, he is said to have shed no tears, but to have uttered the words of the preacher: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity". But his head did not fall under the axe of the lictors, as in the ancient Roman triumphs. He received in Dalmatia a great property, and lived there in abundance with his family. The other captives were enrolled in the Roman army, and Justinian and Theodora heaped presents upon the daughters of Hilderich, and all the descendants of that princess Eudocia, great-granddaughter of the great Theodosius, who had been obliged to espouse the son of Genseric in her captivity at Carthage.