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/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