541 AD: The Worst Year in History

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Was this the worst year in human history? Bubonic plague sweeps across the Mediterranean. The sun vanishes behind volcanic ash. Crops fail, famine bites, and the Roman empire lurches towards collapse.

In this episode of The Ancients, the third in our special Great Disasters series, Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Kyle Harper to uncover the perfect storm of catastrophe that struck the Roman world in the mid-6th century. From volcanic winters to the Justinianic Plague, we explore whether 541 AD marks the true end of antiquity and the dawn of the Middle Ages. Step into a year of chaos that reshaped empires, environments, and human survival.

Did Plague Destroy the Roman Empire?

The Antonine Plague

Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan and the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.

All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Alice Roberts and I've written a new book, Domination, the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity.
0:07.3	In it, I embark on an investigative journey that takes me from the search for a lost monastery in South Wales
0:13.1	to the other end of the Roman Empire, looking for clues in Corinth, Constantinople and ancient Alexandria.
0:20.1	I delve into the archaeology and history and lift
0:22.9	the veil on secrets that have been hidden in plain sight. Domination is available now in hardback
0:28.6	and audiobook. No business leader wakes up thinking, gee, I hope I can make some huge trade-offs
0:35.1	today. And yet that's exactly what most security solutions ask of you.
0:39.3	Trade speed for safety, user experience for control.
0:42.7	Trade keeping things simple for keeping them secure.
0:45.9	Not so with OCTA.
0:48.0	Octa gives you a unified solution to protect identity.
0:51.2	No friction, no frustration, no compromises.
0:56.5	Security that's a launch pad instead of a limiter, it's possible. It's Octa. Hello everyone, a quick note from me before we start the
1:04.4	episode, just a thank you. Thank you to everyone who came to our ancient live show last Friday,
1:09.9	where we explored the story of Carthage
1:11.9	with Dr. Eve MacDonald. We absolutely loved it. It was wonderful to meet so many of you in person.
1:17.8	And I'm here to say that we will be releasing the audio of that live show for you, our subscribers,
1:24.3	next week. So if you want to listen to that live show, if you couldn't make it but really want to listen to it, well you can. You just need to subscribe to the ancients. We'll put a link in the show notes where you can do just that. And it's going to be released next Friday. The dozen different sources from the period say something very strange.
1:55.0	They say basically that the sun disappeared.
1:58.0	Witness a world where nature reigns supreme and catastrophe rewrote the story of civilization.
2:03.6	Huge volcanic bombs are coming out of the sky, these great rocks about three feet across,
2:09.6	crashing through the material.
	...

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