Justinianic Pandemic Sourcebook

Abstract and Overview We aim to create a convenient and reliable resource for scientists, scholars and the general public interested in the evidence documenting the Justinianic Pandemic of bubonic plague (541-ca. 750 CE), as well as related disease and other events. We will build it progressively, as elements are ready. Today it offers what is to our understanding a comprehensive catalog of outbreaks of plague in the First Pandemic documented in written sources, and a non-comprehensive, but ever-expanding, collection of translations of selected primary accounts. Since the modern identifications of epidemic diseases as described in ancient texts are sometimes uncertain, we have sought generally to be inclusive of outbreaks of epidemic disease rather than exclusive, while, wherever appropriate, clearly noting uncertainty of identification. We aspire to integrate these different evidentiary layers through a geodatabase that will allow the general public as well as researchers to easily access and search the evidence from the Pandemic and to visualize its spatial configurations (e.g., via GIS) or its genomic dimensions (e.g., via the Nextstrain platform).