An empire already stretched by war suddenly faced a disaster it could not control. The Justinian Plague spread rapidly across the Eastern Roman Empire killing millions and weakening the economy.

The period from the late fourth to the sixth century C.E. saw the collapse of the Roman empire in the West, and the emergence of the Eastern or “Byzantine” empire, with a distinctive culture that ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Researchers from the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) have discovered an early ...

In the 6th century AD, during the reign of Emperor Justinian, the Roman Empire experienced an extraordinary resurgence, reconquering lands - including Italy, North Africa and Rome itself - that had ...

From the height of imperial power to total collapse, we trace how the Roman Empire lost every one of its provinces over more ...

TAMPA, Fla. (August 27, 2025) — For the first time, researchers have uncovered direct genomic evidence of the bacterium behind the Plague of Justinian — the world’s first recorded pandemic — in the ...

The eastern Roman empire was founded by Constantine the Great on May 11, A.D. 330. The empire fell on May 29, 1453, when the army of the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II breached the walls of Constantinople.

The Code of Justinian, a collection of laws compiled by Byzantine Emperor Justinian, is widely regarded as the foundation of Western law.