The Antonine Plague: Antiquity’s Pandemic
The Romans created a civilization that connected the world in a way it had never seen before. Their vast swaths of territory and trade routes connected areas that had never heard of each other in a complex network of roads and shipping lanes. While great for fostering innovation, this new level of interconnectedness was also perfect for spreading disease.
Disease was nothing new to the Romans, outbreaks of various diseases were common throughout the packed streets of Rome, or in the ranks of the legions. The Antonine Plague was special in its intensity, scope, and destruction. Named the Antonine Plague after the family name of the current Roman Emperors, Antoninus, the plague originated from the eastern reaches of the empire. The first reports of the disease came from legions that were involved in the siege of a city in Mesopotamia. Once these legions were infected, the disease spread like wildfire as legions moved across the vast empire and the disease transferred from legion to legion. Soon the disease was in the civilian population, and absolutely ravaged the populations of the densely packed Roman cities. It was estimated that at the height of the disease 2,000 people were dying each day in the city of Rome, and all across the Empire upwards of 5 million people perished. The plague affected all Romans from all walks of life, even killing the emperor Lucius Verus. With the immense human cost of this disease, many various parts of Rome were impacted. This rash of deaths caused the Roman military further strife as they struggled to field the manpower to defend the massive borders of the empire. While one may expect this would lead to a period of Roman contraction, the Romans were actually able to push their European border further north. Although this disease hit the Romans hard, it hit the Germanic and Gallic tribes that were encroaching on Roman soil as hard, if not harder. As these tribes weakened, the Romans were able to win a few key victories that prevented the advance of these tribes for the time being.
This disease also had an interesting impact on western medicine for the next 1300 years, as it elevated a Greek physician Galen, to medical “stardom”. Galen was a Greek living in Asia Minor, who witnessed the disease's wrath first hand as he tried to cure those afflicted while attempting to figure out the cause of the disease. Galen would go on to publish many treatises on the human body that would be taken as law until disproved by Andreas Vesalius in the 16th century. Many of Galen’s ideas are considered laughable by modern standards, considering that most of his conclusions about the human body were made from dissecting pigs. Although wildly incorrect in many areas of his theories, Galen provided some much-needed insight into the human body mainly with his more correct theories on the circulatory system and the nervous system.
Looking back at this event with the knowledge of modern medicine, historians and scientists generally agree that this disease was likely some form of smallpox. Where it comes from is more interesting, as there are different theories, but many agree that it originated from China. It seems to be a rather absurd proposition that this could occur, but the disease could have made it to Rome via China in a few ways. The most likely is the spread of the disease first to India, and then from India to Romans who traded with India. It is also reported that near this time a group of Roman emissaries visited China, and so this group could have also brought the disease back to Rome. Another possibility is that the disease came from some unknown source living in Central Asia, and from there been spread to both China and Rome. In the end, these are all just theories provided by historians many years after the fact, so the whole truth will never be known. It is interesting to look at how the ancient world dealt with a pandemic and its ramifications as we ourselves are living in the midst of one right now. To put in perspective the immense impact the deaths of five million people would have had on the ancient world, consider that there have been around 2 million confirmed deaths from Coronavirus in a world that is many times more populated. This event is one that rocked the world of the second century from Rome all the way to China, leaving a wake of death and destruction that would be felt for generations to come. When looking back at the struggles man faced days long gone it becomes easy to be thankful for something in a time where it seems that we have so little.
