THE PLAGUE OF JUSTINIAN: THE PANDEMIC THAT MAY HAVE CHANGED ALL OF HISTORY

Episode 6 | Human History — Civilizations & EmpiresIn this History episode we focus on the Plague of Justinian — the first pandemic caused by Yersinia pestis, arriving in 541 AD at the exact moment when the Emperor Justinian was on the verge of reunifying the Roman Empire, and the most compelling counterfactual in history.This episode covers Justinian's extraordinary legal legacy and the Corpus Juris Civilis, Belisarius's reconquest of Italy and North Africa, how the plague killed his soldiers and emptied his treasury, the Gothic War that devastated Italy for two more decades, and the full counterfactual: what a reunified Roman Empire would have meant for the development of Europe, Christianity, and Islam.A bacterium may have changed everything.#HistoryMystery #PlagueOfJustinian #ByzantineEmpire #AncientHistory #HistoryPodcast