Antonine Plague
Antonine Plague | |
---|---|
Jules-Elie Delaunay | |
Disease | probably smallpox |
First reported | Seleucia |
Date | 165-180 |
Deaths | 5–10 million (estimated) |
Fatality rate | 25 percent |
The Antonine Plague of AD 165 to 180, also known as the Plague of Galen (after Galen, the Greek physician who described it), was a prolonged and destructive epidemic,[1] which impacted the Roman Empire. It was possibly contracted and spread by soldiers who were returning from campaign in the Near East. Scholars generally believe the plague was smallpox,[1][2][3] although measles has also been suggested,[4][5][6][7] and recent genetic evidence strongly suggests that the most severe form smallpox only arose in Europe much later.[8] In AD 169 the plague may have claimed the life of the Roman emperor Lucius Verus, who was co-regnant with Marcus Aurelius. These two emperors had risen to the throne by virtue of being adopted by the previous emperor, Antoninus Pius, and as a result, their family name, Antoninus, has become associated with the pandemic.
Ancient sources agree that the plague is likely to have appeared during the Roman siege of the Mesopotamian city of Seleucia in the winter of 165–166, during the Parthian campaign of Lucius Verus.[9] Ammianus Marcellinus reported that the plague spread to Gaul and to the legions along the Rhine. Eutropius stated that a large proportion of the empire's population died from this outbreak.[10] According to the contemporary Roman historian Cassius Dio, the disease broke out again 9 years later in 189 AD and caused up to 2,000 deaths a day in the city of Rome, 25% of those who were affected.[11] The total death count has been estimated at 5–10 million, roughly 10% of the population of the empire.[12][13] The disease was particularly deadly in the cities and in the Roman army.[14]
The Antonine plague occurred during the last years of what is called the
Economic growth and poor health
Epidemics were common in the ancient world, but the Antonine plague was the first known pandemic of the Roman Empire.[15] The Antonine plague spread throughout the Roman Empire, and perhaps other areas, including China, and infected many millions of people. The pandemic erupted during the last years of what is often considered the "golden age"[16] of Rome during the reign of co-emperor Marcus Aurelius. The Roman Empire at that time had a population estimated at 75 million people, about one-fourth of all human beings then living. Historians generally agree that the population of the Roman Empire peaked at about the time that the Antonine Plague appeared and, thereafter, population declined.[17]
The economic prosperity of the Roman Empire notwithstanding, the conditions were propitious for a pandemic. The population was unhealthy. About 20 percent of the population—a large percentage by ancient standards—lived in one of hundreds of cities; Rome, with a population estimated at one million, being the largest. The cities were a "demographic sink" even in the best of times. The death rate exceeded the birth rate and a constant in-migration of new residents was necessary to maintain the urban population. As perhaps more than one-half of children died before reaching adulthood, the average life expectancy at birth was only in the mid-twenties. Dense urban populations and poor sanitation contributed to the dangers of disease. The connectivity by land and sea between the vast territories of the Roman Empire made the transfer of infectious diseases from one region to another easier and more rapid than it was in smaller, more geographically confined societies. Epidemics of infectious diseases in the empire were common, with nine recorded between 43 BC and 148 AD. The rich were not immune to the unhealthy conditions. Only two of emperor Marcus Aurelius' fourteen children are known to have reached adulthood.[18]
A good indicator of nutrition and the disease burden is the average height of the population. The conclusion of the study of thousands of skeletons is that the average Roman was shorter in stature than the people of pre-Roman societies of Italy and the post-Roman societies of the Middle Ages. The view of historian Kyle Harper is that "not for the last time in history, a precocious leap forward in social development brought biological reverses".[19] Despite increasing development, average height did not increase in Europe between 1000 and 1800, while it increased in the 5th and 6th centuries during late antiquity.[20]
Spread of the disease
The traditional Roman view attributed the cause of the Antonine plague to the violation by the
The plague endured until about 180 and another epidemic, possibly related, is reported by
Epidemiology
In 166, during the epidemic, the Greek physician and writer
The historian
Impact
Historians differ in their assessment of the impact of the Antonine Plague on Rome. To some, the plague was the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire. To others, it was a minor event, documented by Galen and other writers but only slightly more deadly than other epidemics which frequently ravaged parts of the empire. Estimates of the fatalities from the pandemic range from 2 to 33% of the Roman Empire's population with deaths between 1.5 and 25 million people. Most estimates coalesce around a fatality rate of about 10% (7.5 million people) of the total population of the empire with death rates of up to 15% in the cities and the army. If the pandemic was indeed smallpox, the number who died would have probably been about 25% of those infected as the survival rate from smallpox is often around 75%, or 3 out of 4 people infected.[29][30]
The traditional view was expressed by Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776–1831) who concluded that "as the reign of Marcus Aurelius forms a turning point in so many things, and above all in literature and art, I have no doubt that this crisis was brought about by that plague ... The ancient world never recovered from the blow inflicted on it by the plague which visited it in the reign of Marcus Aurelius."[31] More recently, scholar Kyle Harper said something similar: the pandemic "in any account of Rome's destiny ... merit[s] a place squarely in the forefront."[32] To the contrary, a team of six historians questioned the "extreme" position of Harper and others on this plague as "ignoring scholarship that suggests it had a less than catastrophic outcome," but the historians affirmed that "we do not doubt that disease and climate had some of the impact Harper describes."[33]
Some historians have hypothesized that the epidemic resulted in a surge in the popularity of the cult of Asclepius, the god of medicine; the epigraphic record, however, shows no evidence of such increase in the cult's popularity.[34]
Impact on the Roman army
The ancient chroniclers portray the plague as a disaster for the Roman army with the army "reduced almost to extinction."
Indian Ocean trade and Han China
Although
Raoul McLaughlin wrote that the Roman subjects visiting the Han Chinese court in 166 could have ushered in a new era of Roman Far East trade, but it was a "harbinger of something much more ominous" instead.
See also
- List of epidemics
Citations
- ^ a b Duncan-Jones, Richard (2018). "The Antonine Plague Revisited". ARCTOS: Acta Philologica Fennica. LII: 44.
- ISBN 9780521871648. Archived from the original on 29 September 2021. Retrieved 12 September 2021.). Downloaded from Cambridge Core.
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:|website=
ignored (help - PMID 11616517.
- PMC 7121113, retrieved 11 May 2022
- ^ "There is not enough evidence satisfactorily to identify the disease or diseases", concluded J. F. Gilliam in his summary (1961) of the written sources, with inconclusive Greek and Latin inscriptions, two groups of papyri and coinage.
- PMID 20202190.
- PMID 32554594.
- S2CID 252341032.
- ISBN 0-275-96890-1.
- ^ Eutropius XXXI, 6.24.
- ^ Dio Cassius, LXXII 14.3–4; his book that would cover the plague under Marcus Aurelius is missing; the later outburst was the greatest of which the historian had knowledge.
- ^ "Reactions to Plague in the Ancient & Medieval World". World History Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on 23 April 2021. Retrieved 6 February 2021.
- ^ "Past pandemics that ravaged Europe". BBC News. 7 November 2005. Archived from the original on 7 October 2017. Retrieved 5 November 2008.
- ^ Smith, Christine A. (1996). "Plague in the Ancient World". The Student Historical Journal. Archived from the original on 6 August 2017. Retrieved 5 November 2008.
- S2CID 162904062.
- ^ Aldrete, Gregory S. (16 August 2020). "How Did the Golden Age of Rome End". The Great Courses Daily. The Great Courses. Archived from the original on 13 September 2021. Retrieved 10 September 2021.
- ISBN 9780691166834.
- ^ Harper 2017, pp. 67–91.
- ^ Harper 2017, pp. 75–79.
- JSTOR 41378413.
- ^ Wasson, Donald L. "Lucius Verus". World History Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on 14 September 2021. Retrieved 12 September 2021.
- ^ Harper 2017, pp. 63–64, 99–101, 117.
- PMID 11616517. Downloaded from JSTOR.
- ^ See McLynn, Frank, Marcus Aurelius, Warrior, Philosopher, Emperor, Vintage Books, London, 2009.[page needed]
- ISBN 0-385-11256-4[page needed]
- ^ D. Ch. Stathakopoulos Famine and Pestilence in the late Roman and early Byzantine Empire (2007) 95
- S2CID 709881
- ISBN 9789004383289. Archivedfrom the original on 24 June 2021. Retrieved 24 June 2021.
- ^ Littman & Littman 1973, pp. 253–254.
- ^ Harper 2017, p. 108.
- ^ Niebuhr, Lectures on the history of Rome III, Lecture CXXXI (London 1849), quoted by Gilliam 1961:225
- ^ Harper 2017, p. 26.
- ^ Haldon, John; Elton, Hugh; Huebner, Sabine R.; Izdebski, Adam; Mordechai, Lee; Newfield, Timothy P. "Plagues, climate change, and the end of an empire: A response to Kyle Harper's The Fate of Rome". Researchgate. Archived from the original on 15 September 2021. Retrieved 14 September 2021. DOI: 10.1111/hic3.12508
- hdl:11025/50932.
- from the original on 15 September 2021. Retrieved 14 September 2021.
- OCLC 1268220329. Archivedfrom the original on 15 September 2021. Retrieved 14 September 2021 – via Research Gate.
- ISBN 978-90-04-15605-0.
- ISBN 978-90-04-15605-0.
- ISBN 978-90-04-15605-0.
- JSTOR 605541.
- ISBN 978-1-4392-2134-1, p. 27.
- ^ ISBN 978-1847252357, p. 59.
- ISBN 978-1847252357, pp. 59–60.
- ^ Yule, Henry (1915). Henri Cordier (ed.), Cathay and the Way Thither: Being a Collection of Medieval Notices of China, Vol I: Preliminary Essay on the Intercourse Between China and the Western Nations Previous to the Discovery of the Cape Route. London: Hakluyt Society, p. 25. Accessed 21 September 2016.
- ^ William H. Schoff (2004) [1912]. Lance Jenott (ed.). "'The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century' in The Voyage around the Erythraean Sea". Silk Road, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington. Archived from the original on 24 February 2011. Retrieved 21 September 2016.
General and cited references
- Bruun, Christer, "The Antonine Plague and the 'Third-Century Crisis'", in Olivier Hekster, Gerda de Kleijn, Danielle Slootjes (ed.), Crises and the Roman Empire: Proceedings of the Seventh Workshop of the International Network Impact of Empire, Nijmegen, June 20–24, 2006. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2007 (Impact of Empire, 7), 201–218.
- ISBN 978-90-04-15605-0.
- Gilliam, J. F. "The Plague Under Marcus Aurelius". American Journal of Philology 82.3 (July 1961), pp. 225–251.
- Hill, John E. (2009). Through the Jade Gate to Rome: A Study of the Silk Routes during the Later Han Dynasty, First to Second Centuries CE. BookSurge. ISBN 978-1-4392-2134-1.
- Littman, R.J.; Littman, M.L. (Autumn 1973). "Galen and the Antonine Plague". American Journal of Philology. 94 (3): 243–255. PMID 11616517.
- Marcus Aurelius. Meditations IX.2. Translation and Introduction by Maxwell Staniforth, Penguin, New York, 1981.
- ISBN 0-385-12122-9.
- Pulleyblank, Edwin G. "The Roman Empire as Known to Han China", Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 119 (1999), pp. 71–79
- ISBN 1-884822-47-9.