Naspeuringen van Paul Theelen: Plagues

Plagues The Antonine Plague of 165 to 180 AD, also known as the Plague of Galen (from the name of the Greek physician living in the who described it), was an ancient pandemic brought back to the Roman Empire by troops returning from campaigns in the Near East. Scholars have suspected it to have been either smallpox or measles, but the true cause remains undetermined. The epidemic may have claimed the life of a , , who died in 169 and was the co-regent of Antoninus, whose family name, Antoninus, has become associated with the epidemic. The disease broke out again nine years later, according to the Roman historian Dio Cassius (155–235), causing up to 2000 deaths a day in , one quarter of those who were affected, giving the disease a mortality rate of about 25%. The total deaths have been estimated at five million, and the disease killed as much as one-third of the population in some areas and devastated the Roman army. Ancient sources agree that the epidemic appeared first during the Roman siege of Seleucia in the winter of 165–166. Ammianus Marcellinus reports that the plague spread to and to the legions along the Rhine. asserts that a large population died throughout the Empire. Rafe de Crespigny speculates that the plague may have also broken out in Eastern Han China before 166, given notices of plagues in Chinese records. The plague affected Roman culture and literature, and may have severely affected Indo-Roman trade relations in the Indian Ocean.

The is the name given to a pandemic that afflicted the Roman Empire from about 249 to 262. The plague is thought to have caused widespread manpower shortages for food production and the Roman army, severely weakening the empire during the Crisis of the Third Century. Its modern name commemorates St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, an early Christian writer who witnessed and described the plague. The agent of the plague is highly speculative due to sparse sourcing, but suspects include smallpox, pandemic influenza and viral hemorrhagic fever (filoviruses) like the Ebola virus. In 250 to 262, at the height of the outbreak, 5000 people a day were said to be dying in Rome. Cyprian's biographer, Pontius of Carthage, wrote of the plague at Carthage: "Afterwards there broke out a dreadful plague, and excessive destruction of a hateful disease invaded every house in succession of the trembling populace, carrying off day by day with abrupt attack numberless people, every one from his own house. All were shuddering, fleeing, shunning the contagion, impiously exposing their own friends, as if with the exclusion of the person who was sure to die of the plague, one could exclude death itself also. There lay about the meanwhile, over the whole city, no longer bodies, but the carcasses of many, and, by the contemplation of a lot which in their turn would be theirs, demanded the pity of the passers-by for themselves. No one regarded anything besides his cruel gains. No one trembled at the remembrance of a similar event. No one did to another what he himself wished to experience". In Carthage the "Decian persecution", unleashed at the onset of the plague, perhaps inadvertently led to the criminalization of Christian oath refusal. Fifty years later, North African convert to Christianity Arnobius defended his new religion from pagan allegations: "that a plague was brought upon the earth after the Christian religion came into the world, and after it revealed the mysteries of hidden truth? But pestilences, say my opponents, and droughts, wars, famines, locusts, mice, and hailstones, and other hurtful things, by which the property of men is assailed, the gods bring upon us, incensed as they are by your wrong-doings and by your transgressions". Cyprian drew moralizing analogies in his sermons to the Christian community and drew a word picture of the plague's symptoms in his essay De mortalitate ("On the Plague"): "This trial, that now the bowels, relaxed into a constant flux, discharge the bodily strength; that a fire originated in the marrow ferments into wounds of the fauces; that the intestines are shaken Naspeuringen van Paul Theelen: Plagues with a continual vomiting; that the eyes are on fire with the injected blood; that in some cases the feet or some parts of the limbs are taken off by the contagion of diseased putrefaction; that from the weakness arising by the maiming and loss of the body, either the gait is enfeebled, or the hearing is obstructed, or the sight darkened; - is profitable as a proof of faith. What a grandeur of spirit it is to struggle with all the powers of an unshaken mind against so many onsets of devastation and death! what sublimity, to stand erect amid the desolation of the human race, and not to lie prostrate with those who have no hope in God; but rather to rejoice, and to embrace the benefit of the occasion; that in thus bravely showing forth our faith, and by suffering endured, going forward to Christ by the narrow way that Christ trod, we may receive the reward of His life and faith according to His own judgment!" Accounts of the plague date from about 249 to 262. There was a latter incident from 270 involving the death of II Gothicus, though it's unknown if this was the same plague or a different outbreak. The says that "in the consulship of Antiochianus and Orfitus the favour of heaven furthered Claudius' success. For a great multitude, the survivors of the tribes, who had gathered in Haemimontum were so stricken with famine and pestilence that Claudius now scorned to conquer them further... during this same period the attempted to plunder in Crete and Cyprus as well, but everywhere their armies were likewise stricken with pestilence and so were defeated.

The population of Britain may have decreased by between 1.5 and 3 million after the Roman period, perhaps caused by environmental changes (the Late Antique Little Ice Age) and, subsequently, by plague and smallpox (around 600, the smallpox spread from India into Europe). It is known that the Plague of Justinian entered the Mediterranean world in the 6th century and first arrived in the British Isles in 544 or 545, when it reached Ireland. It is estimated that the Plague of Justinian killed as many as 100 million people across the world. As a result, Europe's population fell by around 50% between 550 and 700. The later medieval Welsh Lludd and Llefelys mentions a series of three plagues affecting the British of London.

Claudius Gothicus (: Marcus Aurelius Valerius Claudius ; May 10, 214–January 270), also known as Claudius II, was Roman emperor from 268 to 270. During his reign he fought successfully against the and decisively defeated the at the Battle of Naissus. He died after succumbing to "pestilence", possibly the Plague of Cyprian that had ravaged the provinces of the Empire.

Measles: Estimates based on modern molecular biology place the emergence of measles as a human disease sometime after 500 (the former speculation that the Antonine Plague of 165–180 was caused by measles is now discounted). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemic s

References to the unique periodic fevers of malaria are found throughout recorded history. Hippocrates described periodic fevers, labelling them tertian, quartan, subtertian and quotidian. The Roman Columella associated the disease with insects from swamps. Malaria may have contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire, and was so pervasive in Rome that it was known as the "Roman fever". Several regions in were considered at-risk for the disease because of the favourable conditions present for malaria vectors. This included areas such as southern Italy, the island of Sardinia, the Pontine Marshes, the lower regions of coastal Etruria and the city of Rome along the Tiber. The presence of stagnant water in these places was preferred by mosquitoes for breeding grounds. Irrigated gardens, swamp-like grounds, runoff from agriculture, and drainage problems from road construction led to the increase of standing water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria