Graves studied hard before writing Count Belisarius, as he had for I, Claudius. He was sick during much of the writing and struggled to meet the deadline for completion of the novel to which he and his publisher had agreed.

The story is told as if it were a biography by Eugenius, beginning with the childhood of Belisarius and ending with Eugenius' musings about the merits of Belisarius' life. Graves himself called the book "a military manual," perhaps because of the many detailed accounts of battles and derring-do. But the novel is more than a fictionalized biography or a sensational account of ancient wars; it has a tone of fresh immediacy, as if its events happened only yesterday. Eugenius travels with Belisarius and Antonina on the military campaigns, and he writes as if each new event were only a day old, giving the narrative a "you are there...