ABSTRACT
There is overwhelming consensus among scholars that the epidemic that broke out in 541 and soon reached the status of a pandemic affecting to different degrees the whole of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa was true plague. This chapter discusses the symptomatology and epidemiology of the Justinianic Plague. A comparison between modern data and that recorded by Byzantine sources leaves no doubt to the fact that the disease behind the Justinianic Plague was in fact true plague. Response to epidemics is by nature quite different than that towards subsistence crises. While the latter could be alleviated through the distribution of food and the regulation of the market, epidemics were cataclysmic events that illustrated the inability of Late Antique societies to restrain or stop them. Flight from an affected area was not solely a trait of subsistence crises; it has been recorded in outbreaks of plague as well.
