Justinian's Plague: The Pandemic That Reshaped Constantinople

In 541 AD, as Emperor Justinian was restoring the Roman Empire to its former glory, a ship from Egypt docked at Constantinople carrying an invisible passenger. Within months, the Plague of Justinian would kill thousands per day, collapse tax revenues, and fundamentally alter the city's trajectory. This episode explores the plague's arrival via the grain fleet at the Port of Theodosius, its horrific symptoms as described by Procopius, and the dramatic social and economic consequences: abandoned villages, legal battles over property, the collapse of the annona system, and the emperor's own survival. We examine how the city's infrastructure of cisterns, walls, and harbors became liabilities during contagion, and how the plague's recurrent waves over two centuries weakened Byzantium at crucial moments—contributing to the empire's inability to hold its reconquered territories in Italy and Africa. Lucas and Luna discuss the debate over whether the plague truly depopulated Constantinople by half, and what the archaeological evidence from mass graves at Yenikapı tells us. A sobering look at how pandemic shaped the medieval city.

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