The Plague of Justinian

Long, long ago I made a brief mention of the Plague of Justinian, and I've mad many posts dealing with the Bubonic Plague, the Black Death, Yersinia pestis. Researchers looking at ancient DNA from victims confirmed that what struck the Eastern Roman Empire during the reign of Justinian was the same plague, eight centuries before its most famous appearance in Europe.Procopius mentions it in 541, writing the it started at Pelusium, a busy port just east of the Nile delta. Contemporary writers claimed it came to Constantinople on grain ships from Egypt that carried rats. (Egypt was a large exporter of grain to the Roman Empire.) Justinian himself became ill early on, but recovered. Procopius claimed that at its height, the plague was killing 10,000 per day; modern scholars agree that it may have been as high as 5,000 per day at its peak. This is an exaggeration, but the following from his Anecdota (also called "Secret History") may not have been:When pestilence swept through the whole…