Gelimer (480-553), King of the Vandals and Alans from 530 to 534, was the last ruler of the North African Kingdom of the Vandals. He became ruler in 530 after deposing his cousin Hilderic, who had angered the Vandal nobility by converting to Catholicism. Most of the Vandals were fiercely devoted to Arian Christianity.
The eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I, who had supported Hilderic, soon declared war on the Vandals, ostensibly to restore Hilderic but really to restore north Africa to the Roman Empire. Gelimer and the Vandals put up a stout resistance to the Roman general Belisarius and his army, but were defeated twice in 533, at Ad Decimium and Ticameron. In 534, realizing he had no chance of regaining his kingdom, Gelimer surrendered to Belisarius in a cowardly way, Gelimer grovelled at Belusarius's feet and accepted the Romans' offer of vast estates within the empire. He achieved some degree of historical fame, according to Byzantine chronicles, by crying out the verse from Ecclesiastes, 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,' which is mentioned in the works of Gibbon and Fielding.
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