The Plague That Shook The Roman Empire

Summary

After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
Episode: The Plague That Shook The Roman Empire
Release Date: July 14, 2025
Hosts: Anthony Delaney & Maddy Pelling
Guest: Professor Kyle Harper, Historian and Classicist at Oklahoma University

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Introduction to the Justinian Plague

In this episode, hosts Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling delve into the Justinian Plague, one of history's earliest recorded pandemics, which struck the Eastern Roman Empire during Emperor Justinian's reign. This devastating outbreak not only caused immense mortality but also had profound effects on the empire's stability and Justinian's ambitious plans for reconquest.

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The Roman Empire in Late Antiquity

[04:55] Professor Kyle Harper:
"We're in a period that's sometimes called Late Antiquity, sometimes considered the beginning of the Middle Ages. It's one of those periods of transition, of twilight."

Professor Harper sets the stage by describing the state of the Roman Empire in the 6th century. Unlike the grandeur of earlier periods under emperors like Julius Caesar or Marcus Aurelius, the empire's seat had shifted to Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul). Justinian, alongside his wife Theodora, aimed to restore the empire's former glory through military conquests and significant legal reforms, such as the creation of the Justinianic Code.

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The Onset and Spread of the Justinian Plague

[07:47] Maddy Pelling:
"This is the Justinian Plague, the first great pandemic in recorded history. And it began not with a bang, but with the scrape of a rat's claw on wood."

The plague reached Constantinople in the spring via grain ships from Egypt, where infected rats carried the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Initially presenting as fevers, the disease quickly escalated, leading to mass mortality in the city. Historian Procopius vividly describes the horrors:

[01:38] Maddy Pelling:
"The dead were dragged down to the seashore and piled on boats like flotsam on great rivers, pus discharging itself down into the sea."

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Origins and Transmission of the Plague

[17:37] Professor Kyle Harper:
"The cause of this pandemic is the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which is the same pathogen responsible for the Black Death of the 14th century."

Through advancements in DNA analysis, historians now trace the plague's origins to Central Asia, specifically around present-day Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and western China. The disease likely spread through interconnected trade networks within the Roman Empire and beyond, reaching regions such as Egypt, the Red Sea, and ultimately Constantinople by 541 AD.

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Symptoms and Public Reaction

[25:07] Professor Kyle Harper:
"Plague can take different courses in different patients... It can result in deadly septicemia or pneumonic plague, which transmits between humans."

The Justinian Plague manifested in various forms, including bubonic, septicemic, and pneumonic. Bubonic plague caused painful swellings known as buboes, typically in the neck, armpits, or groin, indicating severe infection. Septicemia led to rapid death, often within a day, while pneumonic plague allowed for human-to-human transmission through respiratory droplets.

The swift and brutal nature of the disease fueled apocalyptic fears among the populace. [14:41] Professor Harper:
"Apocalypse is very much already in the air when things get really strange..."

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Cultural and Religious Responses

[35:36] Maddy Pelling:
"In the sky above this whole scene, there is a figure that's emerged from the clouds that my notes tell me is Jesus."

The episode examines how the Justinian Plague influenced cultural and religious expressions, as evidenced by medieval art. A 15th-century painting depicts chaotic scenes of plague-stricken individuals alongside religious figures like Jesus and St. Sebastian, symbolizing the intertwining of divine intervention and human suffering. Professor Harper notes that [36:18]:
"The appropriate response is to seek intercession from figures like St. Sebastian who can ask for mercy for humanity."

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Impact on Justinian's Ambitions and the Empire

[44:44] Professor Kyle Harper:
"The plague weakens the Roman Empire and, combined with prolonged military campaigns, leads to its eventual fragmentation."

The Justinian Plague significantly hindered Justinian's efforts to reconquer and unify the Roman territories. Prolonged military campaigns, compounded by the empire's weakened state due to recurring plague outbreaks, ultimately led to the loss of key regions such as Italy, Africa, and parts of the Near East. This marked a turning point, transitioning the empire from a unified Roman entity to a fragmented Byzantine state.

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Long-term Effects and Historical Memory

[40:18] Professor Kyle Harper:
"The Justinian plague, as an event, is largely buried in histories and chronicles and doesn't have a huge cultural memory."

Unlike the Black Death, which left a substantial mark on European consciousness, the Justinian Plague fades into the background of historical narratives. Its long-term effects, however, were profound, including repeated outbreaks that weakened the empire over centuries and contributed to the eventual decline of Byzantine power.

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Modern Parallels and Lessons Learned

[51:07] Professor Kyle Harper:
"Every pandemic is the same and different... History will remind us that there will be another pandemic in our future."

The hosts draw parallels between the Justinian Plague and contemporary pandemics like COVID-19, emphasizing the recurring themes of vulnerability and interconnectedness. Professor Harper highlights the importance of understanding historical pandemics to better prepare for future outbreaks, noting that despite advancements in science and medicine, the fundamental challenges of disease transmission and societal impact remain relevant.

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Notable Quotes

• Professor Kyle Harper ([04:55]):
  "We're in a period that's sometimes called Late Antiquity, sometimes considered the beginning of the Middle Ages."

• Maddy Pelling ([07:47]):
  "This is the Justinian Plague, the first great pandemic in recorded history. And it began not with a bang, but with the scrape of a rat's claw on wood."

• Professor Kyle Harper ([25:07]):
  "Plague can take different courses in different patients... It can result in deadly septicemia or pneumonic plague, which transmits between humans."

• Professor Kyle Harper ([35:36]):
  "The appropriate response is to seek intercession from figures like St. Sebastian who can ask for mercy for humanity."

• Professor Kyle Harper ([44:44]):
  "The plague weakens the Roman Empire and, combined with prolonged military campaigns, leads to its eventual fragmentation."

• Professor Kyle Harper ([51:07]):
  "Every pandemic is the same and different... History will remind us that there will be another pandemic in our future."

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Conclusion

The Justinian Plague was a pivotal event in the history of the Eastern Roman Empire, demonstrating how pandemics can shape the course of empires and influence societal structures. By examining this ancient catastrophe, the episode underscores the timelessness of challenges posed by infectious diseases and the enduring resilience required to navigate them.

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For further exploration, listeners are encouraged to read Professor Kyle Harper's book, "The Fate of Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire," and explore other related episodes on the History Hit platform.

Transcript

[Maddy Pelling]

Hello everyone. It's us, your hosts, Maddy Pelling and Anthony Delaney.

[Anthony Delaney]

But before we begin the show, we want to ask for a few seconds.

[Maddy Pelling]

Of your time if you're enjoying After Dark. And we love you if you are. We would love you just a little bit more if you could vote for us in the Listener's Choice category at the British Podcast Awards.

[Anthony Delaney]

So go to the Show Notes now, click the link and just then search for After Dark. Fill in your name and your email and don't forget to confirm they will send you an email you need to confirm. The whole process probably takes about 30 seconds.

[Maddy Pelling]

If you've already voted, we are so, so grateful. If you haven't stop what you are doing right now. Vote for us before you enjoy this show.

[Kyle Harper]

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[Anthony Delaney]

Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony.

[Maddy Pelling]

And I'm Maddie.

[Anthony Delaney]

And today we are embarking on the first in our miniseries of some of the deadliest and darkest plagues in history, starting with the Justinian plague that hit the great Roman Empire during its final fight for survival. Without further ado, let the fun begin.

[Maddy Pelling]

It came in with the grain ships, boats from Egypt heavy with wheat to feed the empire's capital. But tucked in the holds beneath the sacks and ropes were rats and riding on their backs. The end of the world. It was spring when the first fevers took hold in Constantinople. At first a whisper, then a shadow, then a scream. By summer, the city, heart of the Byzantine Empire, jewel of Justinian's reign, was drowning in death. In the words of the historian Procopius, the dead were dragged down to the seashore and piled on boats like flotsam on great rivers, pus discharging itself down into the sea. It seemed that as he had it, the whole human race came near to being annihilated. No home was untouched, no street unstacked with corpses to be burned. The emperor himself fell ill. The courts fell silent as the stench of rot and incense clung to the air. The faithful looked upward but found no answers. This is the Justinian Plague, the first great pandemic in recorded history. And it began not with a bang, but with the scrape of a rat's claw on wood. This is after dark, and this is the plague that nearly helped destroy the Roman Empire.

[Anthony Delaney]

Well, it wouldn't be an after dark episode about plagues without the use of the word pus. And puss has come very early into this narrative, as you've just heard there from Maddie. And we are talking about the Justinian Plague. And as you've heard, it is one of the great pandemics in recorded history. And it came at a pivotal moment, too. And that's what we're kind of going to be looking at, that juxtaposition of those two histories. It was Roman Empire as it had evolved to be. And it was pushing for reunification at this point, a return to its former glory, I suppose in many ways. Rome had fallen. The empire seat had now shifted to the east to Constantinople, modern day Istanbul. And joining us today to explore this ancient plague in a bit more detail is Professor Kyle Harper, who's a historian and a classicist at Oklahoma University and author of the Fate of Climate Disease and the End of an Empire. Kyle, you're so welcome to After Dark. We are very intrigued by this subject. So thank you for joining us all the way from Oklahoma.

[Professor Kyle Harper]

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here, and I am thrilled to talk to anyone who will have a conversation about plague with me.

[Anthony Delaney]

Oh, listen, you've come to the right place. We are plague people. So, Carl, just to give us a little bit of a surer footing before we proceed and talk about the plague, give us an idea of what the state of the Roman Empire is like at this particular time.

[Professor Kyle Harper]

Well, we're in the 6th century, so we're in certainly the later phases of the Roman Empire. We're in a period that's sometimes called Late Antiquity, sometimes considered the beginning of the Middle Ages. It's one of those periods of transition, of twilight. And yet I think it's a mistake if we sort of imagine that the Roman Empire is already like a cadaver. It's very much alive. It's different, of course, from the empire of Julius Caesar and Augustus or of Marcus Aurelius. It's a later Roman Empire and already for hundreds of years, by the time of Justinian, Constantinople or New Rome is already an old city. It's originally Byzantium, but it's Constantine in the 4th century who founds a new Rome while the old Rome is still doing just fine. But a new Rome that is strategically placed in one of the most advantageous geographic geostrategic positions you could possibly imagine, where you have access to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, you have access to the near east, you have access to Central Europe, to the West. And Constantinople or New Rome becomes the center of very much a thriving Eastern Roman Empire. And so they still consider themselves the Romans and they absolutely control the eastern Greek speaking and part of the Latin speaking West. But in reality the Latin west has been conquered, divided up, fragmented. Italy is controlled by an Ostrogothic kingdom. Africa is controlled by a group known as the Vandals. Spain, Gaul have been divided up and certainly Britain is in a very post Roman phase. And Justinian, who is one of the most remarkable figures, along with his wife Theodora, ever to hold power in Rome, sets out on a conquest of restoring the Roman Empire. And he's really successful in many ways. He builds the Hagio Sophia, which is architecturally the equal of anything that the Roman engineers of the High Empire ever dreamed of. He codifies the whole of Roman law that we still think of as the Justinianic code that includes the digest of all of the great Roman legal thinkers as well as the laws that apply in the Roman world. So in addition to that, he is also set on reconquering territory and he's quite successful. He retakes North Africa, which is a very valuable, prosperous part of the Roman world centered on Carthage, and restores it to the Roman Empire. And he's in the midst of reconquering Italy. In fact, he's really on his way to bringing back the old core of the Roman Empire, centered on the city of Rome, centered on the Italian peninsula, into the Roman world when disaster strikes.

[Maddy Pelling]

This is a really different Roman world to the one that I grew up learning about as a child and the history of the Romans I've interacted with. And Kyle, I'm wondering, where does Justinian himself see himself in the context of the long history of the Roman Empire and the other emperors, those great emperors you mentioned, Julius Caesar, does he see himself as harking back to an earlier age and bringing back that greatness? Is he taking Rome in a completely different direction now? Where does he want to be perceived in that long lineage?

[Professor Kyle Harper]

Right. It's a great question. And I think if we could ask Justinian, the way that he would start would certainly be religious. And this is one of the really fundamental differences between the high Roman Empire and the late Roman Empire is that the Roman emperor Constantine in the early 4th century converts to Christianity. Christianity becomes the state religion, it becomes the dominant religion of later Roman society. And Justinian really thinks, you know, you can't separate the project of restoring the Roman Empire's glory and the project of being a godsent savior to bring orthodoxy so to bring true what he sees as true Christian doctrine and unity to the world. And so he's a frankly fanatical religious figure as well, who's as intent on bringing or enforcing the orthodoxy of the, the Christian church on the subjects of his, of his empire. So maybe that kind of gets at some of the similarities and differences. Yes, he believes in empire, he believes in restoring its glory, but he also thinks that he's trying to fulfill a mission that God has sent him to do, which is to bring orthodox faith to the world. And for him those are inseparable projects.

[Anthony Delaney]

Another thing that's striking about this later empire is the by now vast trade networks that have been in use for quite some time. I'm wondering, Kyle, if you could speak to us a little bit about how these networks and the grain that's traveling between them often is kind of the perfect catalyst for the plague that we're about to talk about in a little bit more detail.

[Professor Kyle Harper]

Well, there's a larger context too of the way historians have understood the Roman world in that we increasingly appreciate just how much trade there was in the Roman Empire. That includes this later imperial period that Even in the 6th century, the world that we are studying is still a remarkably interconnected world. And I would want to mention the connections within the Roman Empire and then the connections beyond the Roman Empire, because both are important in this story within the Roman Empire, particularly in the eastern Mediterranean. This is in fact one of the great periods of prosperity, of urbanism, economic specialization, of trade. There's an immense trade in wine and olive oil, so agricultural commodities, but also manufactured goods, ceramics and so on glass. And so Constantinople is one of the hubs of this wheel that connects the world and Alexandria, the great city on the Nile Delta, right where the Mediterranean meets Egypt and meets the Red Sea world that we'll talk about. These nodes of trade become conduits of infection. They become the network that carries diseases. And this is true outside the Roman Empire too. Really. We've come to appreciate that there's a kind of globalization. Of course, it's just the old world, but Rome is trading silk with China through intermediaries both over terrestrial trade routes and through maritime trade routes across The Red Sea and across the Indian Ocean. They're trading spices, they're trading pepper, they're trading incense and aromatics, they're trading ivory, it's a huge trade in ivory. They're trading jewels, they're trading gold. So there's a massive external network that connects the Romans to Africa, to sub Saharan Africa, to East Africa and to the Indian Ocean world, to Persia. Of course they're at war with Persia, but India and even indirectly with China beyond. So we have to imagine a world that's highly interconnected.

[Maddy Pelling]

Kyle, you paint a picture of an immensely interconnected and actually very rich, diverse world, and one that is certainly within the Roman context, led by Justinian, who has this very clear path forward for him, he is, as you say, kind of fanatical in his beliefs. I wonder, thinking about the way that Christianity has sort of taken over the Roman Empire in this moment, and how the Romans themselves are, I suppose, having to sort of reassess the shape of their empire, where they're based, where their sort of homeland is, and thinking back to this old idea of, I suppose, Rome as not only a geographical space but a psychological one, and what happens when that's no longer the centre of that world? Is it fair to say that this is also a time of spiritual, maybe even apocalyptic reimagining, that people are psychologically having to think of themselves in new ways and put themselves into new spaces and kind of think about what their purpose is in a way that maybe they didn't in previous centuries in Roman culture, in that it was kind of fed to them and it was so deeply ingrained. Is this a different moment for the Romans in that sense?

[Professor Kyle Harper]

It's interesting that you use the word apocalyptic because it's a very useful term in trying to get at the mindset of people in this period. Christianity provides a timeline. It provides a structure within which cultures can understand how they fit into the flow of time. And it's very different from the pre Christian conceptions of space and time. And yet Christianity is flexible. And not every epoch of Christian history witnesses apocalyptic fervor. A sense that the eminent end of earthly time is approaching. And yet the 6th century becomes one of those phases of the past where the apocalyptic strains that are potentially there in Christian ideas in the Bible and books like Revelation, for instance, sort of come to the foreground. And it's not just the plague that does that. The year 500 is itself kind of a stimulus because it's one of those sort of symbolic years, half a millennium, and it seems to play Some role in getting people thinking about the end of time. To some extent. Apocalypse is very much already in the air when things get really strange. The sun disappears in the year 536, which, you know, we need to have some sort of empathy as historians to try and understand the cultures that we study that don't have the scientific tools and categories that we have. We understand what the sun and the moon are, we understand why they might disappear.

[Maddy Pelling]

Do we know why the sun disappeared in that?

[Professor Kyle Harper]

Yes. This is one of the really fascinating chapters. Certainly, like for me as a Roman historian in my lifetime, our understanding of this has been one of the really cool developments because in 536 we have a number of sources that testify that the sun disappeared for a long time, for like 18 months in some of the sources. Includes like Procopius, who you mentioned, is the most important Greek historian of this period. And in fact he says that when the sun disappears, death and violence and war, so basically plague and war and all things that bring death have come without stop, clear as day. There's like a dozen contemporary sources that say the sun disappeared. And nobody took this seriously. No historians modern times really like paid very much attention to this until in the 1980s, two scientists from NASA who were looking at ice cores, so giant columns of ice that are pulled out of, in this case Greenland, that allow high resolution proxies for what's going on in the atmosphere, noticed that there were indications of volcanic activity in exactly the layers that would align with 536. So this didn't unfortunately lead to like historians immediately opening their eyes. But over time, as the ice core records have gotten better and the tree ring records have gotten better, we've sort of pieced together using the historical sources like Procopius and the kind of paleoclimate physical proxy records, some pieces of the story. So what we know now is that in 536 there was a big volcanic eruption somewhere in the northern hemisphere. Iceland is the best proposal, but it's hard to identify exactly where in which volcano. And now we understand something that's not quite so clearly attested by the written record, that in 540 there's a second really big volcanic eruption, this one tropical. So you have this bam, bam, double volcanic event, two really big volcanic eruptions back to back that send the Earth system sort of out of tilt. They cause really severe cooling. So like very strong short term climate change that then affects the harvests, it affects human societies, it affects animals. So now we kind of can see that the records that witness this and tell us about this actually are describing something that really happened. They didn't understand exactly what it was, but they did their best to describe what they were witnessing.

[Anthony Delaney]

And if you were looking for signs of the apocalyptic at this point, and you've gone from 36 to 40, cut to 5, 41, and we start to see the beginnings of what we will understand as plague. So here's another sign that this world, as you know, it might be about to change. Just set a scene for us, Kyle, about the start of that outbreak. What it looks like, where it's coming from, and how people are reacting to it in the beginning.

[Professor Kyle Harper]

Well, it's a very interesting mystery where it comes from. And there's a lot of historians sort of trying to piece together this puzzle now, because we'll come back to this. But the cause, this pandemic, we now know with absolute certainty, is the bacterium yersinia pestis, which is the agent of true plague. So English is a funny language. Sometimes we say plague, and we just mean a disease outbreak. Sometimes we say plague, and we mean bubonic plague, the disease that's caused by this specific bacterium, Yersinia pestis, which is also the cause of the more famous Black death of the 14th century. It's the same pathogen. And thanks to the DNA work, we've developed a much richer picture of the evolutionary history of this germ. And we know that its ancestral homeland is in Central Asia. And so, much like the Black Death, the origins of this pandemic ultimately can be traced to, really, we think, a pretty specific region. It's pretty amazing. We, thanks to the DNA work, can say that this plague somehow launches from a small region that's today. It's right where Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and western China meet. So you can go look on a map and see it through the Tian Shan mountains and the Borohoro range near Lake Issykul in Kazakhstan. It's like it's here that this disease sort of has its ancestral homeland. Plague is a really weird disease. So, like, think of all the horrible diseases that have killed humans. Tuberculosis, malaria, smallpox, typhus. Those would be on my short list of worst diseases. There's others. But all of those sort of famous diseases that you think of are caused by infectious microbes that evolve and adapt to infect humans and to transmit among humans. They become human diseases. So even if they all have animal origins, they evolve and become human diseases. Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague, is a really, really weird disease. It's an animal disease that never becomes a human disease. We're always collateral damage. And so it's a little like rabies in that. Like rabies can infect humans, it can be very dangerous, can kill humans, but it never becomes a human disease that transmits easily and permanently in human populations. Plague is like that. It's like an animal disease that proves really good at getting into humans, but it lives permanently in animals and specifically in big ground dwelling burrowing rodents like marmots, gerbils, ground squirrels. And so the plague is there in Central Asia, living in marmots and gerbils, and somehow leaps out. We don't know exactly when. I think our best model would say that Sometime in the 6th century, a group of Huns called the Hephthalite Huns conquer this region where the plague is permanently established in animals. And it spills out and it gets into new populations. Somehow it gets from that region to the Roman world and it first shows up, like the historical sources that we have first attest to the plague in the societies that are on the southeastern fringe of the Roman world. So in today, what's Ethiopia and Yemen? So somehow, at some point, the plague shows up on the edges of this interconnected Roman world and strikes these societies that are very closely tied to the Romans in Yemen called the Himyarites, and in Ethiopia and Eritrea called the Aksumites. And from there it moves into the Red Sea, into Egypt, creeps its way north, and then shows up in the Mediterranean in 541. So it strikes a city on the far eastern side of the Nile Delta called Pelusium. It strikes the great city of Alexandria on the western edge of the nile Delta in 541. And from there, once it reaches Alexandria, Alexandria is connected directly everywhere else. And just like when the Black Death, which comes overland to the Black Sea, once the Black Death reaches the grain shipping network. So the Black Sea, which is a really important source of grain in the late Middle Ages, once it reaches those fleets of grain bearing ships with their rodents, if you've got grain, you've got rodents. And plague likes rodents. It spreads by rodents and their fleas. So once it reaches Alexandria, it's metastatic.

[Maddy Pelling]

It's fascinating to me, but perhaps not that surprising actually, that this plague affects so many people before it gets to the Roman Empire and so many cities and presumably big populations. But we remember it today as the Justinian Plague. And so I want to talk about that with you, Kyle. But also, we've done an episode before on the 14th century Black Death, so listeners will be familiar with the symptoms and also the rate, the astonishing rate at which it can spread. And the fact that this is a disease that does not distinguish based on social class. And the emperor himself falls ill, doesn't he? Is that why the plague is named in this way?

[Professor Kyle Harper]

Well, first of all, I'm disappointed that I don't get to describe the symptoms. You've already covered that.

[Maddy Pelling]

It's like, I mean, please tell us in all their gory detail.

[Professor Kyle Harper]

It's such a gory, gruesome fact. Fascinating disease. I really will say this, too. Like, I've studied this disease as a historian, from a historical perspective for, I don't know, a decade or more, and it still just boggles my mind. Like, I still think there's things we don't understand about it. It's such a unusual disease. The way it spreads, the way it kills. It really is kind of a different disease. And it's called the Plague of Justinian for no good reason at all. Just because historians are lazy people. And since it happened in the reign of Justinian, and we know that our source base is very, very biased, like, it's very unfortunate, but 90% of the testimony about this pandemic focuses on the city of Constantinople, where the Roman emperor is, where his palace is. And so our knowledge of it is totally biased, it's totally skewed, because that's where the written sources come from. And we've increasingly come to appreciate, thanks, in part because of the ability to sequence ancient DNA from skeletons, that this plague spread way outside Constantinople, and that the sources that we happen to have that focus on Constantinople are not representative of sort of where the plague struck. That doesn't mean it was absolutely everywhere. But we just need to recognize the written sources we have are very focused on the emperor's court and his city. And yes, as you said, the plague strikes Justinian, but he's a survivor. It. It doesn't kill 100% even without antibiotics. Now, today, if you get plague, I'm here. We've got prairie dogs. Plague is permanently circulating in prairie dog populations here. Don't mess with ground rodents. If you do get plagued, though, today, you know, just start a round of antibiotics and you'll survive. But before antibiotics, plague absolutely would have killed most people who had it. I mean, we don't know exactly, but most people. But he survived.

[Maddy Pelling]

So, Kyle, I feel like I have robbed you of the opportunity to tell us about the symptoms. So if one was to catch plague today before you went for the antibiotics, what kind of symptoms might you expect?

[Professor Kyle Harper]

First, we have to go back to the rodents because plague is a rodent disease that is very adapted to spread by flea bite. And so some rodents have at least some resistance to it. Like it's natural hosts, the marmots and gerbils must have at least some kind of resistance. But the rodents that live with humans, what we call commensal rodents, like black rats, are very susceptible to the disease, so they die. And when the plague arrives, it probably first affects the commensal rodent population. So there's kind of a, a great dying of rats under people's feet, kind of literally. And the rat fleas, the fleas that suck the rodents blood really like, you know, they love the taste, it's delicious to them. Our blood is, is not their preferred dish, but, but you know, if they're starving, they'll stoop and drink human blood. And it's probably when the rodent hosts of the fleas die off that the infected fleas jump to humans. Okay, why does this matter for symptoms of the disease? Because plague is a pretty complicated disease. It can take different courses in different patients. If you're bit, if you're infected by flea bite, which is, I think, how most people who die in the Plague of Justinian, the Black Death, probably are infected by flea bite. Then the bacterium enters your skin and it's like a pollutant. And it's not necessarily in your blood, but it's sucked up by your lymphatic system. So your waste disposal system, which is always cleaning your, your body, sucks it up and the bacterium is swept to your nearest lymph nodes. You have lymph nodes all throughout your body, but you've got lymph nodes in your neck, your armpits, your groin and behind your knees. And it's usually in one of those places, and the ancient sources are very clear on this, that it largely affects people in the neck, armpit, groin and thigh. It's often usually even called the disease of the groin, where the bacteria goes to a lymph node that normally should be able to dispose of nasty things that get in your body. But the biology of this germ is such that it's actually very good at overcoming that defense system and multiplying explosively on your lymph nodes. And so that's why you get what the Greeks call buboes, these swellings of pus, or just the bacterium and the inflammatory response of your body that causes you to have these huge swellings that are very characteristic of the disease. They're very painful and they usually indicate that you're not likely to survive. But the disease is more complicated than that. It can get into your blood. It can get into your blood and kill you very quickly in, like, a day, more or less. Sometimes called the septicemic course of disease. And in fact, usually if it gets into your lymph nodes, it's eventually going to get into your blood because it's just multiplying explosively. And you often will die of septicemia. But one of the things that the ancient sources note and is so terrifying is just how quickly the course of the disease can be, particularly the perception of the course of the disease. So the onset of symptoms to death, if it gets in your bloodstream, can be so extremely short that people perceive, you know, almost that some of the victims are just, like, walking or working and then almost instantly die. That's probably an exaggeration, but it reflects the terrifying speed of what happens if it gets into your bloodstream. But plague is still not done. Plague, because it's multiplying explosively, can also get into your lungs. And if it gets into your lungs, it's called pneumonic plague. That's painful and almost always deadly. And unfortunately, if you do get plague in your lungs, you're going to be spitting it up, you're going to be coughing it up. And once you do that, it's in the air and you can actually plague can transmit between humans quite readily. And so in the mnemonic course of the disease, one plague victim can also become the conduit of the plague spreading to another. And we still don't totally understand how important is this human to human layer of transmission in the great outbreaks. And then I'll say too, like humans, particularly, frankly, in the ancient world, have all kinds of ectoparasites. So they've got lice and flesh fleas on them that are jumping from human to human. And if they're sucking blood, they can transmit the plague. So plague is this weird disease that transmits through rodent fleas, through respiratory coughing, through human ectoparasites. And we don't totally understand the balance of these different routes of transmission. And the routes of transmission then affect what kind of course the disease takes once you get it foreign.

[Anthony Delaney]

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[Kyle Harper]

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[Tristan Hughes]

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[Anthony Delaney]

I have been hearing about the plague for quite some time over the course of like you know, just childhood and school and then, you know, history degrees and postgraduates and all that kind of thing. I don't think think I'm so glad that we let you do that, Kyle, because that was probably one of the most unsettling and most, I don't know, most impactful descriptions of what those symptoms are like. We've heard it on this podcast, Maddie, haven't we? Like quite a Few times of different, okay, you know, 17th century plagues, whatever, but just that kind of whole body thing that you're describing there. And okay, not everybody might have experienced every single symptom. They could have been dead before it even got that far. But it really is this all encompassing thing. And it really highlights, I think, and how flippantly we can get over it really highlights how devastating it will be for people who don't have access to antibiotics at this time. Now, although I'm really glad that you led us down that path, Kyle, I also want Maddie to have her moment in the sunshine. So, Maddie, I have a painting for you so you don't feel left out. And if you can describe what is happening here, because. And then, Kyle, I'd love to hear your kind of take on this as to how it reflects history, if it does at all, because it's a. It's a pretty devastating plague scene. I'll let Maddie describe it and then Kyle will come to you to let us know how historically resonant it is.

[Maddy Pelling]

Okay, so I'm looking at what looks to be a medieval painting, probably, I don't know, 15th century. It looks like it's in a European city. There's a sort of Disneyfied version of a medieval city in the background. There's lots of little turrets and a sort of city wall situation. It reminds me of Carcassonne in the south of France. But it's very interesting to me because I think it kind of talks to this idea of sort of apocalyptic and finding spiritual comfort during a plague like this. So we've got. I'm assuming this is depicting the outbreak that we're talking about, even though it's a depiction that was created much later. And in the foreground we have a sort of chaotic scene. On one side, there's a crowd gathered in despair. There's a woman with her arms thrown up in the air. There's a man who seems to have fallen over. Either he's dying of plague or it's just the stress of the entire situation. And there are two. Two bodies wrapped in shrouds and a third one being brought up in the background. And on the right of the scene, there are a number of priests who have gathered. One of them is reading from presumably the Bible or a prayer book. The other one's carrying, I don't know, maybe a bucket of holy water. Maybe it's some incense burning. Another one has a cross on a staff that he's brought forward. But the most striking and bizarre thing about this image Is that in the sky above this whole scene, there is a figure that's emerged from the clouds that my notes tell me is Jesus. And he has appeared in front of another figure also floating on a cloud, who I'm assuming is St. Sebastian, because he is in nothing but a white loincloth and he is absolutely punctured with arrows, as St. Sebastian is always depicted. What is going on here, Anthony? Please enlighten me.

[Anthony Delaney]

There are, I think, a depiction of a devil and an angel just under those two figures that you've described. I can see that the man that you described on the ground, he's got a bubo on his neck. So I'm presuming this is what Kyle was describing.

[Professor Kyle Harper]

Yeah.

[Anthony Delaney]

So you can see he's definitely a plague victim, although it looks like he's been carrying the bodies, potentially because he's dropped one.

[Maddy Pelling]

Yes, that's exactly it, isn't it? He's dropped down in the middle of disposing of someone else because he's dying.

[Anthony Delaney]

It's chaos and it's apocalyptic. It's end of days type stuff. I certainly wouldn't want to be on that street. So, Kyle, how reflective is this of experiences in the 6th century? Is this sense of apocalyptic dread, sense of reality, or are we dramatizing here?

[Professor Kyle Harper]

Both, probably. I can't see the painting. Is this the Le Ference?

[Maddy Pelling]

Yes, that's the one.

[Professor Kyle Harper]

It's a late medieval painting. He said it's 15th century. You have to be careful. A lot of the paintings that get claimed as plague paintings are really showing other diseases. But this one I'm remembering is definitely plague because it's got the buboes and it's got St. Sebastian, who becomes in the. Certainly in the Black Death. And after one of the main intercessors for plague. And when plague breaks out, the response is often to seek the intercession of saints like St. Sebastian. And I'll say that this is like claiming to represent a late antique scene, but it's probably more reflective of the second plague pandemic of the Black Death and its aftermath. But at the same time, it's helpful because we don't have these kinds of paintings. I mean, one of the challenges as a historian is like, the black. Black Death has so many sources, you can study so many different chronicles and letters and archives and paintings, whereas when you go back almost a millennium, you just don't have the same kind of record. We have a tiny fraction. And so we have to extract everything we can, but then we have to, like, use these sources. So I think it's, you know, used with caution. It's a really valuable way to have a different lens on what the experience of this was like. And it gives you a sense of the kind of, of all consuming terror of plague and of the religious nature of response. I mean, these societies of course, don't have our modern biomedical science. That doesn't mean that they don't have medicine. They do everything they can medically and for them, often the line between religion and medicine is kind of blurry. But this religious response to plague sort of already in the period of the plague of Justinian, starts to develop a kind of, of religious game plan. And so it's improvised in the 6th century, but you certainly get certain kinds of religious devotions, certain kinds of prayers, certain kinds of liturgies. Particularly a lot of the religious action is to ask Mary to intercede and to beg for mercy, as well as saints like Cosmas and Damian, Sebastian and you see develop in the 6th century Liturgical processions where, where bishops or priests will lead the people from one church to another, sometimes carrying images, like images of the Virgin Mary or the saints and praying for God to stop the plague. Because they perceive of the plague, you know, they don't think of it as a bacterial microbe that is driven by infectious dynamics. They think of it as divine punishment, they're being scourged and so they pray for the forgiveness of their sins and they pray for mercy. And you see in the paintings like this, that's what's going on. The plague is under the control of God who is punishing humanity for its sinfulness. And so the appropriate response is to seek intercession from figures like St. Sebastian who can ask for mercy for humanity.

[Maddy Pelling]

Kyle, in your work, have you come across. I'm just thinking about how this is, you know, obviously a 15th century image of a 6th century event very much coloured by the experience of the 14th century and the Black Death. And I wonder, have you come across a renewal in interest in the 6th century Justinian plague in later centuries, particularly when the Black Death happens? I'm thinking about, you know, how when Covid happened, we all suddenly became very interested in the Spanish flu of a hundred years earlier. And historians spent a lot of time looking back to that and there was, you know, lots of sort of comment pieces and newspapers that historians would kind of make these connections between the two. And it's a very, not necessarily an easy thing to do, but it's, I think, something that human beings are very compelled to do to make Those connections and just sort of thread things together as a story. Does this Justinian plague kind of get reinvented in the centuries afterwards?

[Professor Kyle Harper]

Yeah, it's a good question, and I would say only in a very limited way. And it goes back to what we were just talking about because the way in which it does sort of of get remembered is liturgically. And so there's an interest in like, very specifically what did the Pope do? And particularly one of the later 6th century popes. So not the plague of Justinian, but one of its recurrences in the, you know, half a century later that particularly struck Rome was responded to by the contemporary Pope, Gregory the Great, Gregory I, who's one of the kind of seminal figures ever to hold the papacy, who responded to this plague and who orchestrates a massive liturgical response. Very interestingly centered on the church of the great Marian church, Santa Maria Maggiore, which is where Francis was just buried, by the way, and where there's actually a 6th century icon called the Salus Populi Romani, the health or the salvation of the Roman people, which is a sixth century, I think, Byzantine icon of mother and child. That, I mean, it's not a leap of the imagination to imagine that it is actually the icon that would have been carried around by Pope Gregory in the 6th century responding to the Bubonic plague. So the Justinian Plague as an event, as an episode is honestly, it's largely sort of buried in histories and chronicles and doesn't have a huge cultural memory, you know, whatever it is, eight centuries later when the Black Death arrives, it's sort of only the liturgical playbook that gets dusted off to say, what do we do? What prayers do we say? What saints do we seek out? But otherwise the Justinian plague kind of gets lost in memory.

[Kyle Harper]

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[Tristan Hughes]

Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Colosseum? Find out on the Ancients podcast from History hit twice a week. Join me, Tristan Hughes as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians to the Celts to the Romans, and visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were. That's the Ancients from History Hit.

[Anthony Delaney]

Before we wrap up, Kyle, I'd like to go back to the kind of point at which we started and that was this Justinian dream of rebuilding former glory and trying to restore an empire that, you know, with the benefit of hindsight, potentially is on the wane. That's easy for us to say now. I suppose what we do know is that these outbreaks and that pandemics, and we've lived through this ourselves, they tend to derail plans, they tend to derail governmental plans, they impact social services, they impact an awful lot of things that we're still living with, say, in Covid's term, we're still living with some of that impact. Now what I'd like to know is how this plague affected Justinian's dream of restoring the Roman Empire. Did it interfere with the progress that he was essentially making?

[Professor Kyle Harper]

I suppose one of my colleagues, a historian whose work I deeply admire in Germany named Misha Meyer, has a book that is called the Other Age of Justinian. And I think it's a really simple but profound idea that Justinian's reign is really two different reigns. And he reigns for a very long time. So he survives this disease and he's on the throne from 527 to 565. 5. So he's one of these figures like Augustus or Constantine, who's very exceptional just in how long he lives and how long he holds on to power. And all of the kind of remarkable achievements that we think of, of the Justinianic period sort of belong, or most of them belong to this early period of his reign from 527 to 541. And the period afterwards is kind of a new, new age. Now, the Roman Empire doesn't like shut down or completely dissolve, but you have to recognize that it's a really crucial moment in the projects of Justinian and the conquest of Italy completely bogs down and just kind of becomes a low level slugfest that drags on and on and on and leaves both sides completely exhausted. And in the end, what happens right after Justinian Dynamics dies is a new group, the Lombards, are able to come in and very quickly occupy the northern half or so of Italy. Justinian's Byzantine Empire will hold on to little pieces like Rome and Ravenna and parts of the middle. But that campaign sort of was on route, I think to be probably successful. And in the end it becomes a quagmire and at best a very limited success success. So it's a turning point. But that doesn't mean everything falls apart immediately. You see it weaken the Roman Empire. And then one of the things about plague that I alluded to, and this happens in the case of the Black Death. The Black Death is the beginning of the second pandemic. And the Black Death is hugely consequential, but its effects in the long term would have been very different if it didn't recur every 10 to 20 years. What happens is the bacteria finds rodent populations in Europe where it becomes permanently established or established for a long time, and it spills out of these local reservoirs and causes repeated outbreaks. And so these populations, you know, would have recovered from just one blow. But when you have this huge blow and then repeatedly every, every half generation is robbed of a huge portion of its population, it's the long term effects that really matter. And I think that's how we should imagine the plague of Justinian. It's the beginning of what we call the first pandemic. It's not just the one outbreak that we need to think about, it's the series of outbreaks. The plague clearly in my mind, finds a local rodent population where it can hang out for two centuries, centuries. We don't know what that rodent population is. We would love to put more pieces of this puzzle together that's happening, but what matters is that the plague sticks around and it breaks out. Not every subsequent outbreak is as big as the plague of Justinian, but some of them are pretty significant. And it's that long term effect that really in the long run, the Roman Empire that we know, the later Roman period, Justinian's empire is still a real Roman Empire, still rules a huge part of the Mediterranean. It's still a dominant power. And it's really over the course of subsequent generations that a transition happens. You can call it the transition from a Roman to a Byzantine Empire if you want The Byzantines think of themselves as the Romans down to the 15th century, but in the 6th and 7th century, the empire of Justinian completely falls apart. Rome loses Egypt, they lose Syria and Palestine. They'll ultimately lose much of what's now Turkey. So the Roman Empire becomes this tiny little thing that is hardly more than Constantinople and its immediate hinterland. And I think the plague and particularly its repeated outbreaks is one of the factors that we have to include in that story.

[Maddy Pelling]

Kyle, before we let you go, and this has been the most fantastic conversation, I have two very quick questions for you. The first one is, do we know how many people were killed in this plague outbreak? Outbreak?

[Professor Kyle Harper]

We have no idea. It's so frustrating because even in the Black Death, it's a huge question and we have like hundreds times the. The source material, the best source material we have is just from one city. It's from Constantinople, where we do have one of the historians. The other major source besides Procopius is a Syriac ecclesiastical writer named John of Ephesus. He's actually amazing and he gives these very vivid descriptions of the plague and tells us the numbers. He says, says that 300,000 people died. We don't know exactly how much we should trust that. It's the only sort of testimony we have like it. But it would suggest that in the capital a little over half the population died, which in comparison with the Black Death is roughly credible. But that's just in one city. Once you go beyond that, it becomes an even bigger mystery where we have to piece together little clues where DNA is starting to help us at least know how the plague spread or where it spread. So it's a huge mystery. In some places that were worst affected, it may have killed half the population, which is just astonishing because even in most pre industrial pandemics, pre antibiotic, pre vaccine pandemics, that is a lot like that's the sort of peak worst case scenario.

[Maddy Pelling]

I mean, this sort of brings me on to my final question then, which is, you know, whilst we are, you know, maybe slightly hesitant to make these direct connections with a pandemic like Covid, I think what Covid did for our contemporary sort of shared psychology was to make us aware of how vulnerable we are globally to the outbreak of new diseases or diseases that we don't know how to treat yet. And I wonder, as a historian of this time period, if you feel there is something that we could learn going into the future from this particular pandemic, whether it's just simply keep better records, whether it's you know, how we sort of treat and deal with that on a societal level, on a spiritual level. Do you think there's something to be learned here?

[Professor Kyle Harper]

Well, I think there's a lot to be learned from the history of human health and disease. Even though the world we live in is very different. We have modern science, we have germ theory, we have microbiology, we have vaccines, antibiotics, therapeutics. Many of the issues are really the same. Our connectivity has enormous benefits. I'm completely for a globally interconnected world with all of the cultural and material advantages that brings to us. But we just have to recognize that it creates vulnerability. Our population growth creates exposure. Our interaction with animals is really important. I think history reminds us that our health is connected to the rest of the biosphere, to the world of animals, to the physical climate, climate, that we're part of a natural system. And it also tells us, I think, that every pandemic is the same and different. I mean, every pandemic in history is a little bit different. And so there will be another pandemic because we have a huge global population, we're very interconnected, we're close to billions of animals. There's going to be, there's constantly new diseases, we have tools to control disease, but we can never completely conquer it. So there will be another pin pandemic and it probably won't be like COVID 19. So we need to learn lessons from COVID 19 about what we did well and what we did poorly, but also not fall into the trap of thinking that the next pandemic is going to be like the last one. Nature is very creative and very resourceful in the ways that it finds to try and parasitize human success. And so history will remind us that there will be another pandemic in our future. But when we can't say, well, if.

[Anthony Delaney]

You'D like to take some comfort potentially in the past rather than the dread of that, and I absolutely agree it's coming at some point. But I would totally advise you to go and have a look at Kyle's book, the Fate of Climate Disease and the End of an Empire. We also have past episodes on the Black Death and other plague related episodes. And of course we have other plague related episodes on the way as part of the of this, our new miniseries. If you've enjoyed this episode as much as we have, please leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcast. It helps other people to discover us. And if you have a suggestion for other topics that we can cover, email [e-mail] that's after darkistoryhit.com until next time. Happy listening. How many discounts does USAA Auto Insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi vehicle discount Safe driver discount New.

[Professor Kyle Harper]

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[Maddy Pelling]

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[Maddy Pelling]

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