in
Philippi; its construction is believed to have been halted by the plague of Justinian. The Byzantine historian
Procopius first reported the epidemic in 541 from the port of
Pelusium, near
Suez in Egypt. and by
Evagrius Scholasticus, who was a child in
Antioch at the time and later became a church historian. Evagrius was afflicted with the
buboes associated with the disease, but survived. During the disease's four returns in his lifetime, he lost his wife, a daughter and her child, other children, most of his servants, and people from his country estate. According to contemporary sources, the outbreak in
Constantinople was thought to have been carried to the city by infected rats on grain ships arriving from Egypt. The Romans in Byzantium imported a significant amount of grain from Egypt, where rats and fleas potentially affected by
y. pestis were a significant pest control issue. Procopius, in a passage closely modelled on
Thucydides, recorded that at its peak the plague was killing 10,000 people in Constantinople daily, but the accuracy of the figure is in question, and the true number will probably never be known. He noted that because there was no room to bury the dead, bodies were left stacked in the open, funeral rites were often left unattended to, and the entire city smelled like the dead. Given such circumstances, it is highly probable that a sudden increase in mortality rates may not have been as accurately recorded, hence the overall death toll is based on an estimate. In Procopius'
Secret History, he records the devastation in the countryside and reports the ruthless response by the hard-pressed Justinian: When pestilence swept through the whole known world and notably the Roman Empire, wiping out most of the farming community and of necessity leaving a trail of desolation in its wake, Justinian showed no mercy towards the ruined freeholders. Even then, he did not refrain from demanding the annual tax, not only the amount at which he assessed each individual, but also the amount for which his deceased neighbors were liable. As a result of the plague in the countryside, farmers could not take care of crops and the price of grain rose in Constantinople. Justinian had expended huge amounts of money for wars against the
Vandals in the region of
Carthage and against the
Ostrogoths'
kingdom in Italy. He had invested heavily in the construction of great churches, such as
Hagia Sophia. As the empire tried to fund the projects, the plague caused tax revenues to decline through the massive number of deaths and the disruption of agriculture and trade. Justinian swiftly enacted new legislation to deal more efficiently with the glut of inheritance suits being brought as a result of victims dying
intestate. The plague's long-term effects on European and
Christian history were enormous. As the disease spread to port cities around the Mediterranean, the struggling
Goths were reinvigorated and
their conflict with Constantinople entered a new phase. The plague weakened the Byzantine Empire at a critical point, when Justinian's armies had nearly retaken all of Italy and the western Mediterranean coast; the evolving conquest would have reunited the core of the
Western Roman Empire with the
Eastern Roman Empire. Although the conquest occurred in 554, the reunification did not last long. In 568, the
Lombards invaded
Northern Italy, defeated the small Byzantine army that had been left behind and established the
Kingdom of the Lombards.
Gaul is known to have suffered severely from the plague, and plague victims at an early Anglo-Saxon burial site at Edix Hill near
Cambridge show that it also reached Britain. Recently, a mass grave from the casualties of the pandemic was found in
Jerash,
Jordan. The plague may also be documented as far south as in the southern region of the
Arabian Peninsula, in
Sabaic inscriptions from the
Himyarite Kingdom. Procopius said that plague sufferers experienced delusions, nightmares, fevers, swellings in the groin, armpits and behind the ears, and coma or death. Treatments included cold baths, powders "blessed" by saints, magic
amulets or rings, and various drugs, especially
alkaloids. When these treatments failed, people went to hospitals or tried to
quarantine themselves.
Onset of the first plague pandemic The Plague of Justinian is the first and the best known outbreak of the first plague pandemic, which continued to recur until the middle of the 8th century. Some historians believe the first plague pandemic was one of the
deadliest pandemics in history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 15 to 100 million people during two centuries of recurrence, a death toll equivalent to 25 to 60% of Europe's population at the time of the first outbreak. Research published in 2019 argued that the 200-year-long pandemic's death toll and social effects have been exaggerated, comparing it to the modern
third plague pandemic (1855–1960s). == Epidemiology ==