The Byzantine historian Procopius first reported the epidemic in 541 from the port of Pelusium, near Suez in Egypt.[1] Two other firsthand reports of the plague's ravages were by the Syriac church historian John of Ephesus[23] and Evagrius Scholasticus, who was a child in Antioch at the time and later became a church historian. Evagrius was afflicted with the buboes associated with the disease but survived. During the disease's four returns in his lifetime, he lost his wife, a daughter and her child, other children, most of his servants and people from his country estate.[24]