Abstract
Abstract Epidemics were part of the ancient world; the Homeric Iliad begins with a pestilence that decisively shapes the further course of the plot. The sequence of historically attested epidemics ranges from the »Attic Plague« of 430 BCE to the »Antonine Plague« of the 2nd century to the pandemic of the »Justinianic Plague« of 541/42. Plagues are mentioned in numerous genera of ancient literature; in Hippocratic-Galenic medicine, the plague plays an important, yet peculiarly small role. The words »arrows of pestilence«, »miasma«, and »contagion« in the title stand for ancient theories of origin, which covered a wide range of metaphysicalreligious, natural history and empirical views and each conditioned different, also interacting, coping strategies of epidemics.
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