The Plague of Justinian

The disease appears at Pelusium in Egypt, travels with the grain ships to Alexandria and thence to Constantinople. Procopius, an eyewitness, describes the buboes, the delirium, and how in the capital orderly burial ceases and bodies are stacked in the towers of the fortifications. The pestilence returns in waves for nearly two centuries, carrying off people in Italy, Syria and Gaul; the toll is disputed, but the cities and the tax receipts thin out visibly. Justinian's design of recovering the western provinces runs up against the shortage of men and money, and the empire will prove unable to hold what it has won back.