YET no mention about the “Plague of Justinian” (541-49) that is also attributed to Yersinia pestis with the same rough origin geography but a 20% fatality rate in the cities. Due to the diminished travel in western Europe, its main effects were Byzantine / Eastern Roman Empire, the Sasanian Empire (Persia) and the Mediterranean trading routes that led to both northern Europe and south into Arabia.
A historical cusp deriving from this is the explosion of conquering Islam in the next century out of interior Arabia. With both Christian Byzantium and Zoroastrian Persia weak from this plague and centuries of incessant wars, neither was strong enough to resist that tide. By 651, Persia was fully conquered and, in that same century, Byzantium lost almost everything south of Anatolia to all of North Africa.
[I set the time index to skip the intro] James Howard-Johnston (University of Oxford)- The Last Great War of Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2021). 1st Online Edinburgh Byzantine Book Festival, 5-7 February, 2021. Chaired by: Yannis Stouraitis, University of Edinburgh. Organised by: Petros Bouras-Vallianatos, University of Edinburgh.James Howard-Johnston - The Last Great War of Antiquity
February 17, 2021 | Online Edinburgh Byzantine Book Festival
