The Justinianic plague: evidence from the dated Greek epitaphs of Byzantine Palestine and Arabia

Abstract

The Justinianic plague, the first historically attested pandemic of bubonic plague, has recently made headlines with the publication of the genomic analysis of the bacterium responsible for its outbreak.1 Though its primary contribution is to the field of epidemiology, this study is a welcome addition to the growing body of research on the first plague pandemic, for which the literary evidence is still the main source of information.2 A number of attempts have been made to find non-literary evidence for this plague in order to substantiate the literary evidence and gain insight into areas for which the literary sources are insufficient, and the present study joins those by analyzing the corpus of dated Greek epitaphs of the 4th through 7th c. A.D. from the Byzantine provinces of Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda, Palaestina Tertia (or Salutaris),3 and Arabia. The findings appear to confirm the traditional dating of the outbreak of plague to 541, and may even suggest that this first wave was particularly virulent; they are less informative about the succession of later waves.