Plague of Justinian

In 541 AD, a devastating epidemic broke out in Egypt and spread rapidly across the Mediterranean world, reaching Constantinople in 542. It is known as the Plague of Justinian, after the emperor who ruled at the time. The historian Procopius, who witnessed it, described the terrible symptoms and reported that at its height as many as 10,000 people died each day in Constantinople, though his figures may be exaggerated. Bodies piled up faster than they could be buried, and some were stacked inside the towers of the city walls. Justinian himself caught the disease but survived. Modern DNA studies of skeletons from the period have confirmed that the plague was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, the same that caused the Black Death centuries later, making it the first recorded pandemic of bubonic plague. The disease returned in waves for about two centuries. Its impact is still debated, but it likely killed a large share of the population in many regions, weakened the empire's economy and army, and made Justinian's efforts to reconquer the West harder to sustain.