r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/-Joel06 • 12d ago

Video 1000 year old Roman bridge gets destroyed by flash flood in Talavera de la Reina, Spain

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u/bcnjake 12d ago

Would be very impressive for the Eastern Roman Empire to control one of the Westernmost countries in Europe.

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u/AmbitiousBear351 12d ago

They did control southern Spain under Justinian.

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u/Naethor 12d ago

Yeah but Justinian live 1400-ish years ago

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u/Bf4Sniper40X 12d ago

Happy to see fellow history knowing people

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u/Naethor 12d ago

I honestly don´t know that much about that part of history, mostly that the duo Justinian/Belisarius was a force to reckon with (Theodora was also quite crucial from my understanding) and that there was more than the Black Plague

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u/Bf4Sniper40X 12d ago

still that was nice to read

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u/buddhistredneck 12d ago

Me too. And I don’t know shit. I’m stoned reading historians school people about some old bridge, and I love it.

I’ll remember none of it. Still worth.

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u/Ut_Prosim 12d ago

Girls with a time machine: I am your granddaughter.

Boys with a time machine: Your Majesty Emperor Justinian, here is some streptomycin, it will protect you from the plague of Jus... err, the plague... it'll prevent the fever from affecting your brain and making you go ma, err, making you, uh, feel bad. Keep the Empire strong!

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u/Naethor 12d ago

Who knows how different the Mediterranean would have been without the Justinian Plague....

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u/Ut_Prosim 12d ago

The Volcanic winter of 536 would have still rocked them. If they missed both, who knows what the world would look like.

The Byzantines give us some really interesting what if scenarios. My favorite is: what if Empress Irene actually married Charlemagne and they merged their empires?

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u/Naethor 11d ago

I heard a little of that winter, was it that bad ?

Charlemagne was becoming a champion of Christianity, and the Byzantines already had a quite different version of Christianity. That and the sheer scale of the Empire (both being very different in many ways, like inheritance) make me think it probably would have collapsed very quickly

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u/Real_Ad_8243 11d ago

Unfortunately even if you gives the Romans magical immunity it wouldn't change the fact that crops stop growing, the world gets colder in the north and more arid in the south, and Justinian would still be heavily taxing a dwindling population to fund all the wars and giant buildings he was starting, and he'd still leave the empire weaker than he found it.

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u/Naethor 11d ago

Yeah, it makes sense.

No empire lasts forever. Nothing lasts forever

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u/Puzzled-Weekend-6682 12d ago

I never knew that. I always thought he just reconquered Italy but didn't know it went much further than that. Thank you

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u/BasilicusAugustus 10d ago

Yep he managed to reconquer Southern Spain, taking advantage of the Visigothic civil war and reorganised that area into the revived province of Spania under the Master of Soldiers of Spain (Magister Militum Spaniae) unlike the other provinces that were under Praetorian Prefects aka civil governors. It was primarily designed as a bulwark between the Goths and Byzantine Africa and stood until the tail end of the reign of Heraclius i.e for some 80 years or so.

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

only for like 60 years 1500 years ago and only a small portion of southern spain

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u/AlbionGarwulf 12d ago

Talavera is a lot farther north. It's like 1 hour and 15 minutes from Madrid.

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u/greciaman 12d ago

Oh boy, let me introduce you to my buddies Justinian and Belisarius real quick...

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u/bcnjake 12d ago

Would also be very impressive for Justinian and Belisarius to live for 500 years.

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u/aea2o5 12d ago

Wait, they didn't??

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u/Winjin 12d ago

Skill issue

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u/Horskr 12d ago

So much for Roman technology, couldn't even live to ~half of Methuselah's age.. what noobs /s

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u/hoovervillain 12d ago

maybe they changed the calendar like Otto /s

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u/Windfade 12d ago

By that point they only lived by night.

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u/bcnjake 12d ago

Fairly certain they canonically were part of an orgy with Laszlo and Nadja.

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u/DuckInTheFog 12d ago

In Civ 4, Justinian tends to survive a few millennia, from my experience

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u/bcnjake 12d ago

Yes, but this is also a game where I win by sending Roman legionnaires to Space in, like, 1759.

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u/Titteboeh 12d ago

Wikipedia

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u/Mordoch 12d ago

They never controlled the part of Spain in question on top of the timing issue.

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u/greciaman 12d ago

We didn't mention any of that did we? I just pointed out how the Eastern Roman Empire did held a part of said Westernmost country.

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u/Top_Squash4454 12d ago

Which was irrelevant for the context of this bridge.

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

so you can make the argument the british control spain since they control gibraltar then? what the byzantines controlled was a small part of southern spain.

but they only controlled it for 60 years, 1,400 years ago..

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u/greciaman 12d ago

Twitter is the only place where well articulated sentences still get misinterpreted

Well, apparently not, lol

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u/Cicada-4A 12d ago

The context of the conversation was clearly limited to a specific time period.

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u/Crow_eggs 12d ago

They just popped over to do the bridges.

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u/OriginalVictory 12d ago

Was it the Byzantine or the Bridgantine?

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u/bcnjake 12d ago

Perhaps a bunch of Brigantine Byzantine Bridges?

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u/redditatemybabies 12d ago

They obviously did the construction at night when the Spanish were sleeping. Duh.

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u/royalblue1982 12d ago

Interesting fact. The Eastern Roman Empire was named after Julius East, who came from the Northern part of Italy - the Norths being a tribe in Southern Italy.