{"id":68347,"date":"2024-05-23T18:37:06","date_gmt":"2024-05-23T23:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68347"},"modified":"2024-05-23T18:37:06","modified_gmt":"2024-05-23T23:37:06","slug":"a-plague-comes-before-the-fall-lessons-from-roman-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68347","title":{"rendered":"A \u2018plague\u2019 comes before the fall: lessons from Roman history"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A \u2018plague\u2019 comes before the fall: lessons from Roman history<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"Colosseum.\"The ruins of the Colosseum in Rome. Credit: Livioandronico2013. CC BY-SA 4.0.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The\u00a0Pax Romana\u2014<\/em>the 200-year \u201cgolden age<\/a>\u201d of the Roman Empire\u2014was a marvel of diversity, connectivity, and unchallenged hegemony. By the middle of the second century AD, imperial Rome ruled territory across three different continents. Roughly one-quarter of the Earth\u2019s population, some 60 million people, lived under Rome\u2019s vast aegis, and the emperors of the age\u2014most notably Marcus Aurelius\u2014enjoyed the consent of those they governed. The Empire\u2019s elites\u2014witnessing the disciplined legions, widespread religiosity, cultural efflorescence, and dominant economy\u2014likely expected their world order to endure forever.<\/p>\n

In the year 166 AD, however, seemingly eternal Rome was caught completely off-guard as a deadly novel disease swept across the Eurasian landmass. It ransacked Rome\u2019s cities for at least a decade and preceded centuries of decline. This major biological event\u2014now known as the Antonine plague\u2014appears to have been\u00a0the world\u2019s first pandemic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Historians hotly debate its death toll\u2014with estimates ranging from 2 percent to 35 percent mortality\u2014and its broader social and economic effects. The disease itself remains undiagnosed. The great Greek physician Galen described its main symptoms as fever, throat ulcers, and a pustular rash. Some have suspected it was measles or smallpox, but\u00a0modern analysis<\/a> provides reasons to doubt these as the possible culprits. Human remains from the Antonine plague period, meanwhile, have thus far failed to yield genetic evidence sufficient to identify the pathogen.<\/p>\n

Although the plague did not on its own cut short Rome\u2019s dominance, it struck an empire that was confronting multiple challenges beneath a veneer of prosperity and growth\u2014factors that modern-day infectious disease experts might recognize as creating the ideal conditions for pandemics. Much remains unknown about the Antonine plague; in some ways, modern scholars are just as in the dark about this first pandemic as its contemporary victims…<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A \u2018plague\u2019 comes before the fall: lessons from Roman history The ruins of the Colosseum in Rome. Credit: Livioandronico2013. CC BY-SA 4.0. The\u00a0Pax Romana\u2014the 200-year \u201cgolden age\u201d of the Roman Empire\u2014was a marvel of diversity, connectivity, and unchallenged hegemony. By the middle of the second century AD, imperial Rome ruled territory across three different continents. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[18187,34639,3262,607,1346,1024],"class_list":["post-68347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-bulletin-of-the-atomic-scientists","tag-colin-elliott","tag-disease","tag-pandemic","tag-plague","tag-rome"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68348,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68347\/revisions\/68348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}