From 535 to 554, the Romans under the Emperor Justinian gradually reconquered Italy from the Ostrogoths. The conflict utterly devastated the peninsula and seriously weakened the Roman economy, with the result that for decades to come the empire lay helpless and vulnerable. Some of the surviving Lombards fled north or west, while others remained and were gradually assimilated into West Roman society. Never again would a Lombard state rise again to its former power.