Justinian I

The sleepless emperor who dreamt of a Roman restoration, Justinian was the bridge between the classical world and the Byzantine future. He famously codified a millennium of Roman law into a single "Corpus," providing the legal skeleton for modern Europe, while raising the Hagia Sophia as a dome of golden light that seemed to hang from heaven by a chain. He was a man of immense administrative appetite, guided by the sharp intellect of his empress, Theodora. He represents the ruler as the Great Restorer, the one who attempts to stitch the fragments of a fallen glory back together.