This survey of the reign of the Emperor Justinian and the Byzantine Empire dissects the complicated political and military environment surrounding Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire in the 6th Century CE, and discusses the ambitions and achievements of the Emperor Justinian.

At the opening of the sixth century, large segments of the Roman Empire had fallen to barbarian warlords. The Churches of Rome and Constantinople were locked in a schism rooted in different attitudes towards the decrees and definitions of the Fourth Ecumenical council held at Chalcedon in 451. The emperor Justinian (527-565) dreamed of reunifying and restoring the Empire; but to accomplish this he needed a unified Church. Before Justinian ascended the throne the schism between Rome and Constantinople had been healed, largely due to Justinian's influence, but a significant segment of the Eastern population (dubbed monophysites) would not accept the union and the imperial church remained divided.

The reign of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian (527–65) stands out in late Roman and medieval history. Justinian re-conquered far-flung territories from the barbarians, overhauled the Empire's administrative framework and codified for posterity the inherited tradition of Roman law. This work represents a modern study in English of the social and economic history of the Eastern Roman Empire in the reign of the Emperor Justinian. Drawing upon papyrological, numismatic, legal, literary and archaeological evidence, the study seeks to reconstruct the emergent nature of relations between landowners and peasants, and aristocrats and emperors in the late antique Eastern Empire. It provides a social and economic context in which to situate the Emperor Justinian's mid-sixth-century reform programme, and questions the implications of the Eastern Empire's pattern of social and economic development under Justinian for its subsequent, post-Justinianic history.

“An exceptional, well written, exhaustively researched, and detailed biography” of the controversial Roman emperor—from the author of Constantius II (Midwest Book Review). Justinian II became Roman emperor at a time when the Empire was beset by external enemies. His forces gained success against the Arabs and Bulgars but his religious and social policies fueled internal opposition which resulted in him being deposed and mutilated (his nose was cut off) in 695. After a decade in exile, during which he strangled two would-be assassins with his bare hands, he regained power through a coup d’etat with the backing of the erstwhile Bulgar enemy (an alliance sealed by the marriage of his daughter, Anastasia). His second reign was seemingly harsher and again beset by both external and internal threats and dissension over doctrinal matters. An energetic and active ruler, his reign saw developments in various areas, including numismatics, administration, finance and architecture, but he was deposed a second time in 711 and beheaded. Drawing on all the available evidence and the most recent research, Peter Crawford makes a long-overdue re-assessment of Justinian’s colorful but troubled career and asks if he fully deserves his poor reputation.

From the acclaimed author of Miracle Cure and The Third Horseman, the epic story of the collision between one of nature's smallest organisms and history's mightiest empire During the golden age of the Roman Empire, Emperor Justinian reigned over a territory that stretched from Italy to North Africa. It was the zenith of his achievements and the last of them. In 542 AD, the bubonic plague struck. In weeks, the glorious classical world of Justinian had been plunged into the medieval and modern Europe was born. At its height, five thousand people died every day in Constantinople. Cities were completely depopulated. It was the first pandemic the world had ever known and it left its indelible mark: when the plague finally ended, more than 25 million people were dead. Weaving together history, microbiology, ecology, jurisprudence, theology, and epidemiology, Justinian's Flea is a unique and sweeping account of the little known event that changed the course of a continent.