Another eyewitness to the plague described by Cyprian, with notes on the “Persecution of Decius”

Abstract

In JRA 28 (2015), I published a study of the sources for the pandemic mortality event that struck the Roman Empire during the years A.D. c.249-270. Although relatively neglected in recent historiography, this pandemic is surprisingly well attested both by contemporary witnesses and by later sources reflecting the earlier tradition. The study identified at least 6 contemporary testimonies and 6 other independent lines of transmission about the disease, disentangling some two dozen sources of information down through the Late Byzantine chronicles. The plague described by Cyprian, despite progressing against the backdrop of one of the most poorly documented phases of Roman history, has left behind a body of literary evidence that in sheer volume exceeds the testimony for the better-studied Antonine plague of the late 2nd c. Moreover, the evidence for the plague described by Cyprian is, collectively, quite compelling; the consistency of independent testimony adds credence to the claims of a major mortality event. My study claimed to have gathered the ancient sources “comprehensively and collectively”, but such claims are precarious and an electronic search of the Cetedoc Library of Christian Latin Texts has uncovered yet another (seventh) contemporary witness to the pandemic.