The Plague of Justinian: When the Byzantine Empire Became a Mass Grave

In 541 CE, a plague emerged in Egypt that would kill an estimated 25 to 50 million people - potentially half of the world's population at the time. The Plague of Justinian hit the Byzantine Empire so hard that Constantinople was losing 5,000 to 10,000 people per day at its peak. The death toll was so overwhelming that society simply collapsed under the weight of corpses.

Byzantine historian Procopius documented the horror in graphic detail. Bodies piled up in the streets faster than they could be buried. Gravediggers died before finishing their work. The city ran out of grave space, so they stuffed corpses into fortress towers until they overflowed. They loaded bodies onto ships and pushed them out to sea. They dug massive plague pits and fi ...