THE BATTLE FOR ROME, part 1 (1960)--In German with English subtitles

In THE BATTLE FOR ROME, the Roman Empire has been shattered by Germanic invasions by the 6th century AD,. Italy is ruled as an independent kingdom by the Ostrogoths, while the surviving, eastern remnant of Roman civilization is fast taking on a new identity as the Byzantine Empire. The aristocracy of Rome, led by the crafty and arrogant Cethegus Caesarius, dream of overthrowing the Goths and reclaiming their city's ancestral glory. When the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great dies, Cethegus takes advantage of the struggle for the succession that erupts between Amalaswintha and Mataswintha, the king's savage daughters. Having played on Amalaswintha's paranoia to build his own power, Cethegus makes a secret pact with Belisarius, then Narses, Byzantium's greatest generals. Cethegus tries touse the Byzantine armies to recapture Italy, trying to undermine both the Byzantines and Ostrogoths. Whoever emerges alive and victorious will claim power over a reconstituted Roman world. The ensuing war causes upheavals in all three competing governments and ravages Italy itself. When the Ostrogothic state falls, Rome's hopes of reviving the past die with it.