The Belisarius Series is a fictional saga co-written by David Drake and Eric Flint and published by Baen Books. The premise of the series is that a war between two competing societies in the future spills over to 6th century Earth. The New Gods back the Malwa Empire of India and commence attempts to conquer the world and stamp out meritorious accomplishment as a means to privilege and instead favor planned eugenics and hereditary birth (autocracy) in order to change the future. Meritorious performance is seen to originate in the Eastern Roman Empire (a.k.a., the Byzantine Empire), and the root cause of a future that must be changed by conquest, and Malwa has a malleable society and the base power for their intervention. Anything in the way (other Indian kingdoms, the Sassanid Persian Empir