<P> As a result of the plague in the countryside, farmers could not take care of crops and the price of grain rose at Constantinople . Justinian had expended huge amounts of money for wars against the Vandals in the region of Carthage and the Ostrogoths' kingdom in Italy . He had dedicated significant funds to the construction of great churches, such as Hagia Sophia . As the empire tried to fund the projects, the plague caused tax revenues to decline through the massive number of deaths and the disruption of agriculture and trade . Justinian swiftly enacted new legislation to deal more efficiently with the glut of inheritance suits being brought as a result of victims dying intestate . </P> <P> The plague's long - term effects on European and Christian history were enormous . As the disease spread to port cities around the Mediterranean, the struggling Goths were reinvigorated and their conflict with Constantinople entered a new phase . The plague weakened the Byzantine Empire at a critical point, when Justinian's armies had nearly retaken all of Italy and the western Mediterranean coast; the evolving conquest would have reunited the core of the Western Roman Empire with the Eastern Roman Empire . Although the conquest occurred in 554, the reunification did not last long . In 568, the Lombards invaded Northern Italy, defeated the small Byzantine army that had been left behind, and established the Kingdom of the Lombards . The plague may have also contributed to the success of the Arabs a few generations later in the Byzantine - Arab Wars . </P> <P> Some scholars have suggested that the plague facilitated the Anglo - Saxon settlement of Britain, as its aftermath coincided with the renewed Saxon offensives in the 550s . Maelgwn, king of Gwynedd in Wales, was said to have died of the "Yellow Plague of Rhos" around 547 and, from 548 to 549, plague devastated Ireland as well . Saxon sources from this period are silent, as there are no 6th - century English documents . </P> <P> The Romano - British may have been disproportionately affected because of trade contacts with Gaul and other factors, such as British settlement patterns being more dispersive than English ones, which "could have served to facilitate plague transmission by the rat". The differential effects may have been exaggerated . British sources were then more likely to report natural disasters than Saxon ones . In addition, "the evidence for artifact trade between the British and the English" implies significant interaction and "just minimal interaction would surely have involved a high risk of plague transmission". However, scholars (like L. Lester in their Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541--750), as evidence that the plague damage done on the Sub-Roman Britons was greater than the one suffered by the Anglo - Saxons, believe that the sudden disappearance around 560 of the important Roman town of Calleva was probably due to the Plague of Justinian, which later created a kind of curse on the city "damned" by the Anglo--Saxons . </P>

Who was mostly blamed for causing the plague