On 541 AD a plague broke out in the Byzantine empire. According to the Byzantine historian Procopius, the best primary source of the period, the epidemic appears to have begun around the port of Pelusion, near Suez in Egypt. ”Then it divided…
No famine during the harsh winter of 763-4?
Extreme cold and extensive snowfall is rather unusual in the eastern Mediterranean apart of the mountain regions. However the winter of 763-4 AD was so terrible that Byzantine sources referred abundantly to it. Leo IV and Constantine V. Leo was…
”…the only food they had was the spring swallows”
The Third Siege of Messolonghi was fought in the Greek War of Independence, between the Ottoman Empire and the Greeks, for almost a year. The people of Messolonghi attempted a mass breakout on the night of April 10, 1826. The…