 On Sunday, October 15, 533, the Roman general Belisarius, accompanied by his wife Antonina, made his formal entry into Carthage, sparing it a sack and a massacre.Thereafter, the city became the seat of the praetorian prefecture of Africa, which was made into an exarchate during the emperor Maurice's reign, as was Ravenna on the Italian Peninsula.These two exarchates were the western bulwarks of the Roman Empire, all that remained of its power in the West.