In the year 541 death fell upon the Byzantine Empire. Brought across the sea by rats on trading boats from the ports of Egypt, the Justinian Plague swept through its namesake's empire, leaving 25-50 million people dead before it had run its full course. At its worst 5000 people were dying in Constantinople a day. This is an extract from Procopius' 'History of The Wars' in which he details the spread of the disease, and how it thoroughly and mercilessly "destroyed men". How do we actually know about history? Voices of the Past is a channel dedicated to recreating the original accounts from the people who lived through events, or who lived far closer to them than we do today. We do this word for word, with an accompanying soundtrack of rousing music and images. — Thanks for watching! Don’t forget to subscribe for new videos every single week! & Let us know in the comments what you’d like to see covered in the future. — Become a patron for as little as a dollar a month & help keep this project going:- https://www.patreon.com/historytimeUK — Don’t forget to subscribe to our primary channel History Time, where we make full length historical documentaries:- https://www.youtube.com/historytime — History Time is now a podcast. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts from. —Join our community on social media:- Twitter:- https://twitter.com/HistoryTimeUK/ Facebook:- https://www.facebook.com/HistoryTimeOfficial/ Instagram:- https://www.instagram.com/historytime_ig/ — Music courtesy of:- - Epidemic Sound - Joss Edwards Music:- https://soundcloud.com/jossedwardsmusic Kevin MacLeod — Voice actor & editor:- David Kelly We've compiled a reading list of our favourite history books via the Amazon influencer program. If you do choose to purchase any of these incredible sources of information then Amazon will send us a tiny fraction of the earnings (as long as you do it through the link) (this means more and better content in the future