r/todayilearned • u/Recent_Flounder6011 • 19h ago
TIL that before the Black Death in Europe, there was the Plague of Justinian. The plague weakened the Byzantine Empire's economy and caused the empire's decline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian160
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u/hyperlethalrabbit 16h ago
Yeah, the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death were part of the first and second plague pandemics, respectively. There was actually a third pandemic as well in the mid-19th century, which the WHO only considered "over" in 1960.
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u/Recent_Flounder6011 16h ago
Today, we have antibiotics
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u/TheUnspeakableh 6h ago
It's still endemic to the American southwest.
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u/cantproveidid 3h ago
There's evidence of plague in Bronze age Britain 4,000 years ago. They just recently found evidence of plague among hunter-gatherers in Siberia from 5,500 years ago.
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u/FenixOfNafo 19h ago
World war Z fanfiction where the Justinian plague was actually a zombie outbreak is one of the best things i read online
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u/Goufydude 14h ago
Didn't the Survival Guide also provide a list or prior confirmed or suspected outbreaks as well? It has been more than a decade since I read it...
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u/Gimme_Your_Wallet 12h ago
Yes lots, in the book the Romans were quite adept at battling Solanum outbreaks.
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u/yaki_kaki 15h ago
Id love a link
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u/FenixOfNafo 14h ago
I read it on Tales of world war z.. a fan fiction site.. sadly the site seems to be defunk now
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u/Combat_Proctologist 8h ago
Justinian (and Bellisarius) made decent progress towards re-taking the west. It took the worst year ever (536AD where a volcano caused crop failures all over) followed by the Justinian plague to stop them. God had to nerf the Romans really hard
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u/bakgwailo 5h ago
Bellisarius was GOAT. Easily top 5 if not top 3 Roman generals. Certainly the last of the great ones
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u/Current_Tangerine_78 2h ago
Yes, but they drastically overextended themselves in doing so and left themselves vulnerable to enemies.
While it may be romantic to want to revive the empire by recapturing the old western territories, it ignored the reality of a changed world-they would have been better off consolidating around the East (including Egypt). Not to mention, Belisarius’s invasion of the Italian peninsula inflicted more damage than the Goths, Vandals, and Huns combined.
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u/mickeyt1 19h ago
“Caused the empire’s decline”
Looks inside
Empire lasted another 900 years
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u/eranam 16h ago
Lasting is not exclusive to declining.
The Byzantine Empire reached an apex under Justinian it never was able to equal again.
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u/top5top5top5 13h ago
It didn’t just impact the Byzantine empire though. The Persian emperor Khosrow the Great was dunking on Justinian, and was occupying several Byzantine cities.
He had to pull out due to the plague which affected his empire too.
Khosrow eventually deported the entire population of Antioch and rebuilt another one literally called “Better than Antioch, built by Khosrow.”
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u/eranam 10h ago
Hum, no.
The plague hit Roman territory first, pummeling Constantinople 2 years after Khosrow broke the peace and attacked the Romans while their armies were tied up in Italy.
Khosrau might have withdrawn his armies the same year in 542 because of said plague but the evidence for that is thin.
So, if anything, the plague disadvantaged the Romans in their defense against Persia because it put them in a vulnerable position in the first place. Persian momentum might have faded because of the plague, but it certainly helps building one when your opponents’ population is dying off at cataclysmic rates in the first place.
And yeah, Khosrau was very petty
> There he held chariot races, where he made the Blue Faction—which was supported by Justinian—lose against the rival Greens.
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u/top5top5top5 9h ago
I’m not sure what you’re disagreeing with?
Khosrow had an opening, he attacked and achieved success. He then withdrew from a position of power because of the plague.
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u/eranam 9h ago
I’m disagreeing with the implication that somehow the plague helped the Romans defend against the plague. And relativizing its impact.
Even now, you’re doing it, with that simplistic phrasing completely ignoring what I said about both the plague benefiting Persian initiative and its impacts in making them retreat being debated. Sigh.
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u/top5top5top5 6h ago
Read what I wrote lol. I literally said the plague didn’t just impact the Romans. You’re arguing just for the sake arguing lmao.
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u/eranam 3h ago
I read what you wrote.
> It didn’t just impact the Byzantine empire though.
You’re the one arguing in the first place, in case you’re not aware of the meaning of though. Did you read what you wrote?
And how about you read what I wrote?
> I’m disagreeing with the implication that somehow the plague helped the Romans defend against the plague. And relativizing its impact.
How about you address that instead of parroting your simplistic take and dodging the meaning of what you’re saying?
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u/Morbanth 4h ago
Khosrow eventually deported the entire population of Antioch and rebuilt another one literally called “Better than Antioch, built by Khosrow.”
If I had a nickel for every time the Persians built a second Antioch and called it Better Antioch I'd have two nickels which isn't much but it's weird that it happened twice.
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u/_trouble_every_day_ 2h ago
This is so misleading and only makes sense if you don’t differentiate between Byzantine and western Roman, but you’re making the distinction.
They were the most advanced state in Europe for the majority of their existence and can only be viewed as decline when you’re comparing to a time when the empire was over twice the size.
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u/greeneggzN 18h ago
I was gonna say, pretty sure the fourth crusade which sacked Constantinople was the immediate reason for the decline and eventual collapse of
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u/fiendishrabbit 17h ago
The Byzantine empire had already been on the decline for two centuries by then. The fourth crusade was just the nail in the coffin.
The primary reason would be pressure from the new islamic empires in general and the loss of Anatolia (after the Battle of Manzikert, 1071) in particular.
Losing Anatolia robbed it of one of its most valuable province and gutted Byzantine military might (Anatolia supplied the empire with the majority of its cavalry).
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u/Thickenun 17h ago edited 14h ago
Honestly, even Manzikert wasn't the big thing that ruined them, the Komnenian restoration saw the Empire rebound quite a bit. Even 1204 wasn't unrecoverable as the Empire of Nicaea was holding on and doing decent against the Turks. I have even seen arguments that the recovery of Constantinople from the Latin Empire was actually a huge blunder, as it was a massive drain on their resources and they may have been in a position to recover Anatolia if they didn't strip the empire bare in an attempt to restore the city. Nonetheless, if they had managed to survive 1204 and hold until just a little longer then the Mongols would have obliterated pretty much every problem to their east.
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u/sfxer001 8h ago
Gozer the Traveller. He will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the rectification of the Vuldronaii, the Traveller came as a large moving Torb! Then during the third reconciliation of the last of the Meketrex supplicants, they chose a new form for him, that of a giant Sloar! Many Shubs and Zulls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of a Sloar that day, I can tell you
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u/obliqueoubliette 17h ago
I'll come out and say the 4th Crusade ended more Roman institutions than the vandals or the Arabs.. but the state listed another two centuries
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u/_trouble_every_day_ 2h ago
Where they were essentially a city state, certainly no longer an empire. Having nigh impenetrable city walls is the only thing keeping them on the map.
Must have been an anxiety ridden 200 yrs.
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u/Freidhiem 14h ago
The eastern Roman empire both waxed and waned after Justinian, but never reached that apex again.
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u/GamingMunster 13h ago
The empire after Heraclius had periods of contraction and expansion, but really from that point it was a terminal decline.
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u/TheUlfheddin 10h ago
I hear-tell it's "Istanbul" these days.
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u/Quintilllius 13h ago
Without the plague, they could have reconquered all of Italy for longer time.
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u/resuwreckoning 5h ago
“The Nazis may have won the war but D-Day was the turning point in their demise 900 years later”
Lol
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u/_trouble_every_day_ 3h ago
From their perspective they were a continuation of the Roman Empire, but since OP used the term Byzantine it refers to the state that existed after the decline of the western Roman empire.
So OP is claiming their decline started in the first 100 years of their 900 year existence.
Also I had to scroll past a dozen top comments before I got to one pointing this out.
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u/Recent_Flounder6011 18h ago
The plague made it vulnerable for outside powers.
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u/BigCommieMachine 18h ago
It did a lot of heavy lifting for the rise of Islam.
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u/top5top5top5 13h ago
Heavy lifting? You’re talking as if the Persians and Byzantines just rolled over for the Arabs. Read up on the military successes of Khalid ibn Waleed against both the Persians and the Byzantine Romans. Dude was a military genius.
For a desert tribe to appear and tactically outclass two heavyweights is extraordinary.
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u/FuckTheTile 8h ago edited 8h ago
The Arabs had great timing on their side but ultimately they won their wars of conquest through skill of arms. Many conquering Arabs served as mercenaries in Roman or persian armies previously, so they definitely knew a thing or two about war
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u/_trouble_every_day_ 2h ago
They were largely nomadic pastoralists which gives them an advantage over settled states even though that seems counter intuitive to us as most written history depicts nomads as being pre civilized.
When city states conquered each other it was usually accomplished by using nomads as metcenaries. They not only spend all of their time riding and fighting, but they can lay sieges indefinitely as they aren’t relying on agriculture to feed themselves.
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u/mickeyt1 18h ago
The plague was horrific and certainly bad for the empire, but to say it caused its downfall approximately 40 generations later is quite the bank shot. Many, many things happened in the interim, and the empire was by no means doomed by that particular plague, except with the benefit of knowing how things eventually worked out. It’s like saying Charlemagne caused the American Revolution.
As the other commenter says, it helped with the rise of Islam, but the unification of the Arabs around a figure who could lead them to conquest is a freak occurrence, by no means inevitable after the plague
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u/willyshakes420 17h ago
Charlemagne did cause the American Revolution. He inadvertently allowed Robert the Strong's Father to live. Thereby letting the Capets have a chance to change the course of history.
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u/AntiKouk 13h ago
Decline and Downfall are two different things. It absolutely helped with the one and was inconsequential with the latter
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u/UndercoverMonkeyMan 16h ago
It wasn't a freak occurrence at all. Muhammad is largely a fictional character. The devastation of Rome and Persia had everything to do with the Arab success, and the loss of the breadbasket in Egypt doomed Rome to never rule over the Mediterranean again.
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u/resuwreckoning 5h ago
It’s more like saying Alfred the great caused the US to form.
Like ok, but….
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u/UndercoverMonkeyMan 18h ago
Mainly shrinking. And because the rats that spread the plague prospered in cities and not deserts, the Arab population was ascendant and would soon humiliate both Rome and Persia
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u/ScreenTricky4257 10h ago
Both of them were Y. Pestis, weren't they? Or is the jury still out on that question?
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u/TheUnspeakableh 6h ago
Justinian was probably y. pestis. The two earlier 'roman' plagues, Cyprian and Antonine were probably measles or smallpox.
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u/TheUnspeakableh 6h ago
There were at least three major plagues during the Roman Empire days, at least the Justinian plague was probably y. pestis. The other two, Antonine and Cyprian, were probably smallpox, but we cannot be sure. (IIRC)
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u/Death_and_Gravity1 2h ago
Im curious though if the Justinian plague was y. pestis than why didnt it become endemic to that part of the world in the same way like it did after the Black Death? Was it a different strain or something else going on?
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u/paulatreides0 1h ago edited 50m ago
It did. There were multiple recurring plague events that only started dying down around the 8th century. The end of the constant plagues (that at that point had been hounding the empire for nigh 2 centuries at that point) in the 740s alongside the (general) gradual resurgence of the Roman state from the Isaurians until the end of the Macedonians was taken as a sign of God's growing favor with/forgiveness of the Roman state
Obviously the Byzantines weren't the only ones affected by it, a lot of the Eastern Mediterranean, Mesopotamia, and Persia (at the very least) were, but the Romans are convenient due to pretty consistently having a decent amount of historical records to work with - hence why we hear about it so much more from Byzantine sources than other places
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u/Careful-Arrival7316 19h ago
These big empires basically become massive epicentres for huge pandemics because of the massive populations and unsanitary conditions. They all eventually wind up this way if they don’t war themselves to death first.
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u/Previous-Artist-9252 18h ago
I wrote one of my favorite term papers in college on the Plague of Justinian. Absolutely terrifying shit.
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u/daosxx1 10h ago
There is a fantastic book, “Justinians Flea” by Rosen that covers this era.
Justinians wife is an actress when they meet (actresses are also high end escorts at the time)
Gladiatorial hooligans almost over throw him (yes it’s just like it reads). He needs to be stopped (by his wife) from fleeing.
Justinian has the most successful / last real great attempt to put Humpty Dumpty (the Roman Empire) back together. It’s a great story slowed by conflict, disease, a year of darkness worldwide due to a volcano, and plague.
The author goes in depth into architecture of Roman’s and Greeks and the building of the Hagia Sofia.
The author goes in depth into the black plague, how it spreads, what it is.
Justinian is at odds with his main General who is, for my money, one of the last great generals in the way that we think of ancient generals .
10/10 book
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u/Bayushi_Vithar 9h ago
I was excited to get a copy of this book. Filled with historical inaccuracies unworthy of a historian. Ruined the book for me.
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u/bakgwailo 5h ago
Justinian is at odds with his main General who is, for my money, one of the last great generals in the way that we think of ancient generals .
Bellisarius definitely the last of the great. Top 10 certainly all time, arguably even top 3.
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19h ago
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u/arcarus23 17h ago
What the hell kind of comment is this? Both plagues destroyed Europe and the Middle East. There are even arguments that the Justinianic Plague was even worse than the Black Death (though that is far from conclusive and a minority opinion.) We can also throw in North Africa and probably East Asia and India with the Black Death as there is on going research to consider the rest of the impact on Eurasia. Both occurrences irrevocably changed Eurasia and North Africa.
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u/Greedy_Economics_925 16h ago
It's a glib comment.
More accurate is that these plagues significantly reshaped European society.
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u/FuckTheTile 11h ago
What is often missed from this discussion is that volcanos kept going off throughout the decade, plunging the world into darkness for entire years at a time. It’s in Chinese and Irish annals. Probably the worst (most apocalyptic) period to be alive in human history