Abstract
AbstractKyle Harper's article on the “Plague of Cyprian” that appeared in this journal in 2015 constitutes the only comprehensive study to date of this important disease outbreak in the third quarter of the 3rd c. CE. The current article revisits the main evidence for this epidemic and corrects and improves our understanding of its origin, timeline, and spread. It contends that the disease entered the Roman Empire via Gothic invasions on the Danube rather than traveling up the Nile from inner Africa. It further argues that the disease reached the Roman Empire only after the death of Decius and cannot be connected with the latter's edict commanding sacrifices to the Roman gods, issued in 249 CE. While the pestilence indubitably exacerbated the political and military crisis of the third quarter of the 3rd c. CE, it should probably not be considered as the root of the crisis itself, as Harper has suggested.
Highlights
Kyle Harper’s article on the “Plague of Cyprian” that appeared in this journal in 2015 constitutes the only comprehensive study to date of this important disease outbreak in the third quarter of the 3rd c
The current article revisits the main evidence for this epidemic and corrects and improves our understanding of its origin, timeline, and spread. It contends that the disease entered the Roman Empire via Gothic invasions on the Danube rather than traveling up the Nile from inner Africa
CE with the “Plague of Cyprian,” which had hitherto basically gone unnoticed in scholarship on ancient pandemics or the 3rd-c. crisis of the Empire
Summary
The same wave of the disease devastating the population of Rome in 262/3 CE is mentioned by Aurelius Victor.62 In spring 263 CE, according to my redating of the letter discussed above, Bishop Dionysius is lamenting recurrent pestilences and a tremendous loss of men in Alexandria.63 During what was possibly the final recurrence of the disease in August 270 CE, Zosimus reports that the pestilence attacked the barbarians and took the life of Emperor Claudius.64 Again, we have references to the Scythians and to the Danube provinces for this last documented outbreak of the epidemic, which this time seems to have after only doing damage to the cities he passed through.
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