Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

ash into the earth’s skies, ushering in one of the sharpest global environmental crises in human history. As a result the world’s climate changed for as much as a decade. Temperatures fell by at least 2 degrees Celsius globally, and summers effectively disappeared. From Ireland to China, crops withered and harvests failed. Agricultural production collapsed. Tree growth slowed—in some cases trees died where they stood. Procopius was sure it marked a major and historic shift in imperial fortunes. “From the time when this thing happened,” he mused, “men were free neither from war nor pestilence nor any other thing leading to death.”41 The first round of deaths were manmade. Beneath leaden skies, Belisarius led Byzantine forces on a rampage north through Italy, taking Reggio and Naples before riding bloodlessly into Rome, whose citizens chose not to resist him. By May 540 he had fought his way to the royal capital at Ravenna, and a truce was eventually drawn up by which Italy was partitioned between the Ostrogoths north of the river Po, and the Byzantines to the south. Although the Ostrogoths’ king, Vitiges, was deposed and taken back to Constantinople, his people were subjected to a surprisingly gentle peace. But clemency was a matter of necessity, for in June of the same year a Persian army under Khosrow I invaded Byzantine Syria and sacked the great city of Antioch, burning and plundering it with terrible loss of life. Another cycle of war between Rome and Persia loomed. Al...