Born Then533–554
Life during the Justinian's reconquest wars
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
The eastern emperor Justinian sent armies to retake North Africa from the Vandals (533–534) and Italy from the Ostrogoths (535–554). Africa fell quickly, but Italy was fought over for twenty years, with Rome besieged several times. The war, followed by plague, left much of Italy poorer and emptier than it had been.
Deaths: unknown; Italy was badly depopulated by twenty years of the Gothic War.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from our model, estimated from the sources.
Around the same time
- Justinian's reconquest wars 533–554
- Plague of Justinian 541–549
- Recurrences of the first plague pandemic 558–750