The study of the Antonine Plague and other Roman pandemics between traditional sources and the natural sciences*

Studying a phenomenon of great contemporary interest: rationale and methods

Historians strive to uncover the reasons behind historical events and historical change. Among what can be called traditional explanations and causes, in the sense that they can be found already in the ancient sources themselves¹ – such as personal ambition, political decisions by rulers or governing bodies, pressure or revolts from below, geographic destiny, or chance – we find modern suggestions inspired variously by the humanities and/or the social and economic sciences: capitalism, imperialism, militarism, class conflict, various economic factors, and more.

In addition, today ever more contributions that rely in the natural sciences seek to identify deeper-lying causes which may at least in part have determined the behaviour of past human actors: ecological factors, the impact of the climate, including the waning and waxing of sunspots, patterns of precipitation, and temperature changes. And, not least, there is the impact from pathogens which impact human populations^2. This last-mentioned historical agent will be the subject of the present contribution.

Already several decades before the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic³, which broke out in earnest in the first months of 2020, the major plagues of the Greco-Roman world were generating an increasing amount of research, and the interest has continued to grow. This interest is understandable enough in a world which has experienced the effects of COVID-19.

Perhaps before this modern pandemic one might have called our growing interest in ancient health and wellbeing something of a paradox, insofar as the population in almost all nations today enjoys a longer lifespan than ever before and modern medicine is able to defeat or deflect ever more pathogens that have plagued ancient populations. Why, then, the interest in the illnesses of the past, when modern societies have so little in common with that aspect of antiquity? Modern historical research naturally responds to contemporary concerns, witness the Vietnam war and the ensuing focus on Roman imperialism, or the interest in Greco-Roman homosexuality which accompanied a modern public recognition of sexual diversity.

As far as the interest in ancient pandemics is concerned, the paradox undoubtedly lies in our modern society, in which longer lifespan and improved health has led to an ever greater and indeed insatiable interest in improving these aspects of our lives even more, as well as a heightened focus on death itself, captured almost fifty years ago by Philippe Aries⁴. These interests and concerns, in turn, were carried over into ancient Greco-Roman history. Fascinated and often horrified we empathize with populations who suffered so much more than we hardly can imagine ourselves doing even in our worst nightmares.

Then, most recently, our own present experiences with COVID-19 would seem to have provided a prime rationale for why we should wish to study topics like the Antonine Plague, a pandemic which will occupy most of the following pages. But an initial warning is called for: it would surely be a serious mistake to think that the way in which modern life, including the economy, was interrupted by COVID-19 would provide a ready model for understanding societal change in an ancient Mediterranean society grappling with a serious disease.

In retrospect, the numbers from the years 2020 and 2021 are certainly shocking. The number of all deaths globally during these two years is calculated to have been 131 million, which means that an excess mortality of almost 16 million can and must be attributed to COVID-19. Thus, mortality worldwide increased by c. 14%. But when the total global population reached at least 7,600 million in 2021, even an excess mortality of 15 million means that the losses during the coronavirus pandemic in no way can be compared with the situation the Roman world is thought to have faced during the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and his successors⁵. Some scholars estimate the mortality to have amounted to between a 20 and a 25 percent reduction of the total population of the Roman empire over a generation⁶. However, the complexities of contemporary society and the interconnectivity which spans the whole globe, combined with the readiness of many governments to issue mandates of various kinds, followed by actions of the civic administration, meant that the impact of COVID-19 was noticeable in most fields of human activity. In every respect the ancient world was different: communities were more isolated, the economy was much less sophisticated, the reach of the government was limited.

The rapid advances in modern science which can benefit also the historical disciplines constitute a third reason for focusing on ancient epidemics, besides the desire to uncover neglected fundamental factors that influence human societies and the current fascination with illness and death. Through the analysis of ancient DNA and various other research carried out in laboratories, experts who employ methods from chemistry, biochemistry, medicine, genetics, and other fields help us to understand ancient diseases and the conditions under which human societies suffered or thrived. This simultaneously adds to the challenges that “old-school” historians face, scholars who do not possess a BSci (not to mention a more advanced science degree). We need to make a special effort to understand what our colleagues are investigating and the arguments they are making, because in the end it is always a question of interpreting data, and when it comes to historical situations, historians should have the clearest understanding of the overall context and be best suited to identify cause-and-effect sequences⁷.

Two (or three) Roman pandemics

For several decades already not only Roman historians, but also the scholarly world at large as well as the general public have shown great interest in two pandemics which struck the Roman world during a period of some 380 years, between c. 165 and c. 540 AD. More recently, a third event, claimed to have been of similar magnitude and located in the mid-third century AD, has been added to the discussion.⁸

The first of these potentially cataclysmic events is known as the “Antonine Plague”, and two still fundamental research contributions appeared in the second half of the last century, published by Frank Gilliam (1961) and, thirty-five years later, in 1996, by Richard P. Duncan-Jones. It is well-known, and perhaps typical for this field of study, that these two scholars held diametrically opposed views regarding the nature and effect of the pandemic.

Almost four centuries after the pandemic which raged during the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus, the late-antique world was struck by the “Plague of Justinian”. Some fifteen years ago the results of a conference on this topic, organized in Rome at the American Academy, was published, a work in which most contributions presented a strong argument for the seriousness of this pandemic⁹. Nevertheless, the discussion has continued, as lively as ever, and molecular analysis has confirmed that the pathogen indeed was Yersinia pestis, a form of which eight hundred years later caused the Black Death pandemic¹⁰.

In the interval between these two pandemics we find a third and potentially similar event, sometimes called the plague of the emperor Gallienus (he became co-emperor in 253 and was sole ruler 260-268 AD) but also known as the “Plague of Saint Cyprian” or the “Cyprianic Plague” (the saint-to-be died in 258). The reference to Cyprian, who mentions a disease in his writings, was preferred by Kyle Harper in his seminal publications on the topic, which gave origin to another lively and ongoing scholarly debate¹¹.

In the discussions concerning these three events the questions are always the same, namely, the dimension of the pandemic, the mortality, the number of victims, and the general impact of the disease on the overall situation in the regions that were struck and in the states that were concerned, principally the Roman empire, and, in the sixth century, the Byzantine empire. To me it appears fair to say that in the background, either explicitly or implicitly, there is always another historical event, the so-called Black Death, caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium, which caused unparalleled havoc in Europe beginning in the mid-fourteenth century¹². We are well informed about the spread of the Black Death, about actions taken to stem its progress, about the immediate effects on human societies it had, as well as about its more long-range social, cultural, and economic effects. It would certainly be useful to be able to judge to what extent we can use the course of the Black Death and its effects as an analogy when studying the pandemics of the Roman world. But on so many levels we lack certainty about which analogies are meaningful. Still, the medieval experience seems to constitute a background noise when we discuss classical antiquity.

From Gilliam 1961 to L’effetto della Peste Antonina 2012

For reasons of space and competence this contribution will focus on the Antonine Plague. The significance of the pandemic in the history of the Roman empire had been emphasized as early as by B. G. Niebuhr in the 1840s (although not by Gibbon), and by scholars such as Otto Seeck, A. E. R. Boak, and Santo Mazzarino¹³. In recent times, the article published in 1996 by Duncan-Jones has undoubtedly played a fundamental role in the discussion, even though other contemporary Roman historians such as Elio Lo Cascio already previously had underlined the importance of the Antonine Plague for the economic and demographic history of the Roman empire¹⁴.

According to the Cambridge ancient historian, remarkably dire consequences of the plague can be seen in many fields of human activity, comparable to what occurred after the Black Death. This was the case in Italy, likewise in Egypt, and in many other places¹⁵. Already Gilliam, in 1961, had included the then known literary sources relevant for understanding the Antonine Plague in his argument, as well as rich epigraphical and papyrological documentation, reaching what one might call a “minimalist” conclusion (namely a loss of between one and two percent of the population of the Roman empire, i.e. at the most one million dead in excess of the normal mortality)¹⁶. Duncan-Jones interpreted the same sources quite differently, taking all ancient numbers and references to the magnitude of the pandemic literally¹⁷, while most of his case was based on epigraphic and papyrological evidence, including two recently discovered and potentially significant papyri. To repeat the kind of numbers that can be found in studies of the “maximalist” tradition, William Harris in 2012 suggested that at least sixteen million persons fell victim to the Antonine Plague (note 7 above).

A new element brought into the debate by Duncan-Jones consisted of several series of epigraphic texts presented in the form of visually powerful bar graphs – such as dated inscriptions from Rome, building inscriptions, quarry marks, and brick stamps – which purported to show the effects of the plague¹⁸. A similar method was employed much more recently, when a team from Aarhus University presented the result of an investigation of dated portraits from Palmyra: the numbers decrease, beginning around the mid-160s AD¹⁹. A few years after Duncan-Jones’s article, Walter Scheidel, the Roman historian from Stanford University, known among other things for his fundamental publications on historical demography, picked up Duncan-Jones’s thread while focusing above all on the situation in Egypt. His conclusions agreed with those of Duncan-Jones²⁰.

Some scholars were not convinced by the interpretations presented by Duncan-Jones and Scheidel. Among them was Roger Bagnall, a recognized authority on Roman Egypt and the papyrological sources.²¹ In a similar vein, more recently Colin P. Elliott forcefully stressed the impact of natural factors other than a pandemic on the population of Egypt and the economic conditions of the province, such as insufficient flooding of the Nile, lower temperatures, and draught, to which came marauding boukoloi²².

Other contributions to the debate about the severity of the Antonine Plague took issue with the use that Duncan-Jones had made of the epigraphic evidence from Italy. James Greenberg pointed out flaws in the statistical argument, showing how viewing a longer time sequence and a giving the data a different resolution showed a much reduced “impact” of the plague on the economic trends during the reign of Marcus Aurelius²³. My own first contribution to the discussion, focusing on Rome and Ostia, was two-pronged. On the one hand, it was a question of the quality of the sources used by Duncan-Jones. After all, if the primary data is incomplete and does not include all the material known to us, not even the most sophisticated model will yield useful results. A second part presented epigraphic evidence from Ostia, a town which has received surprisingly little attention, although it ought to have suffered more than almost any other settlement, being densely inhabited and in contact with the whole Mediterranean, not least Egypt. An inventory of the inscriptions which mention the reigning emperor, although showing differences between the reigns, revealed no impact of the Antonine Plague. This ought to constitute a problem for those who hold the “maximalist” view of the plague’s impact²⁴.

Somewhat later, at a conference in 2006, I analyzed Duncan-Jones’s argument that reduced imperial sponsorship of public buildings in Italy revealed a major impact of the plague. The contribution revealed the imprecise foundation on which the relevant statistics was built and further argued that a potential reduction in imperial sponsorship could not possibly be attributed solely to the plague, when at the time the empire and its finances were facing numerous other challenges²⁵.

At this point, about halfway through the first decade of the new millennium, the moment seemed ripe for organizing an international conference on the Antonine Plague, which Elio Lo Cascio indeed did in the autumn of 2008. Half of the papers were delivered in Rome at La Sapienza University and the other half on the island of Capri, which often had been the venue for conferences on Roman economic history hosted by the self-same Lo Cascio. As is known, a volume containing the revised papers accompanied by some additions appeared in 2012 under the title L’impatto della Peste Antonina²⁶. The Italian title and the presence of several contributions in the same language has unfortunately meant that the content of the book is less well-known than it would deserve among anglophone scholars and students. It is therefore not superfluous to provide a few references to the content on the following pages.

If someone was hoping that the encounter would resolve the differences between the two competing interpretations of the Antonine Plague, that person would be somewhat disappointed by the outcome. Duncan-Jones was unfortunately not able to participate in the 2008 conference (instead he published a new study in 2018, on which below), but Scheidel’s contribution can be found in the published volume²⁷. The task of presenting a summary of the Rome-Capri conference and of delivering conclusive remarks had been entrusted to William Harris of Columbia University, a creative and innovative Roman historian in need of no introduction. Harris underlined the importance of having almost certainly identified the disease as smallpox and brought into play the “wigwam argument”, once championed by Keith Hopkins, according to which many arguments, which individually are not particularly strong, when combined provide a solid foundation for a hypothesis²⁸. While also acknowledging all the other problems which the empire faced in the 160s and 170s (cf. below p. 12), Harris came down decisively on the side of the “maximalists”²⁹.

In truth, a glance at the volume edited by Lo Cascio shows its content to be fairly evenly divided between those holding a cautious view and those preferring the maximalist interpretation of the impact of the Antonine Plague. The question of the seriousness of the plague was not solved in 2012 and still remains open³⁰, but there is nothing to say that a healthy discussion, incorporating new results of various kinds that can be expected, might not one day allow scholars to reach a consensus. It is based on this conviction that the following pages are written³¹.

The value of the literary sources. What about other pandemics in Roman texts?

In a discussion which in recent years often has taken place on the pages of journals dedicated to the natural sciences and medicine (on which more below), it may be useful to begin by stressing the value of the ancient literary evidence. In order to write history we need narrative sources. The difference between prehistory and history lies precisely in the presence of written sources. All three Roman pandemics were “discovered”, as it were, or “identified” by modern historians thanks to ancient literary sources. In the absence of the narratives of Cassius Dio, the Historia Augusta, or the writings of St. Cyprian himself, it would be impossible to identify a social phenomenon such as a catastrophic pandemic³².

Moreover, when modern experts on ancient and modern medicine discuss the clinical nature of the Antonine Plague, in the absence of genomic evidence from antiquity they still depend on the literary evidence when making their diagnosis. So, for instance, Rebecca Flemming recently relied on a close reading of the Greek physician Galen’s text when advancing her own diagnosis of the plague (see further below in section 10)³³. Even making sense of some of the most recent data provided by the natural sciences, especially the record of lead pollution in the Greenland ice, is impossible without being strongly anchored in the narrative historical sources (p. 312-316 below)³⁴.

Of course, in the absence of literary sources, epigraphers could instead collect the epitaphs from a certain town or region, then try to date them with extreme precision (usually an impossible task), and finally present statistical tables about the mortality during specific periods. And epigraphers might also be fortunate enough to find certain specific longer texts which mention as cause of death a lues, morbus, or pestis (generic Latin terms without precise medical significance), or texts which record several deaths that occurred more or less at the same time. Archaeologists could contribute by identifying and hopefully dating mass graves, which might lead to a suggestion that the deceased were the victims of an epidemic. In some rare cases, organic remains might even allow scientists to carry out a DNA analysis which could reveal the pathogen.

However, on the basis of fragmented and poorly dated evidence of the kind just mentioned it would hardly be possible to present a credible hypothesis of a global pandemic, or even of a regional epidemic which would have had serious consequences for a society as a whole. (While circulating such claims in mass media or generating online traffic is an altogether different matter, as we shall see below.) Without the context provided by the literary sources, modern scholars are stuck at the level of speculation, regardless of how exciting one’s theories may be.

Moreover, one major disadvantage when studying prehistoric contexts, or contexts without literary evidence, is that we have no idea about the mood of the population when it became necessary to bury, say, eight corpses together in a mass grave. Were the deceased “sinners” who deserved their fate, were they considered the victims of a witchdoctor from a neighbouring tribe, had some domestic foe poisoned them, or was this simply a sign of divine wrath which targeted the community (like Apollo’s arrows struck down the Greeks at Troy; Hom., Il., 1.23-52)? Even if modern scientists can accurately identify the presence of a specific pathogen in a population, the “effect” depends also on how the community interpreted and reacted to the event.

Luckily, and as is well known, we have at our disposal a good amount of literary evidence which concerns the Roman period and Late Antiquity, and therefore we can talk about the Antonine Plague, the Plague of St. Cyprian, and about that of the emperor Justinian. And perhaps that is not all. It may be useful to keep in mind the literary evidence for a number of other Roman epidemics³⁵.

Already for the period of the Roman Republic the literary sources refer to a large number of epidemics at Rome: L’impatto della Peste Antonina contains an evaluation of the evidence from Livy’s Ab urbe condita between c. 470 and c. 140 BC by Richard Paine and Glenn Storey³⁶. Concerning the period of the Principate, we can note the following:

• For the year 22 BC, at the beginning of Augustus’ reign, Cassius Dio reports the following:

The pestilence raged throughout Italy so that no one tilled the land, and I suppose that the same was the case in foreign lands. The Romans, therefore, reduced to dire straits by the disease and by the consequent famine, … (Cass. Dio 54.1.1; translation by E.C. Cary, LCL).

• Later, under Nero in the year 65 AD, Tacitus refers to a deadly epidemic in Rome:

Campania was wasted by a whirlwind, which … carried its fury to the environs of the capital, where all categories of people were decimated by a deadly plague. … The houses were filled with lifeless bodies, the streets with funerals. Neither sex nor age gave immunity from danger. Slaves and the freeborn alike were summarily cut down, amid the laments of spouses and children, who, themselves infected while tending or mourning the victims, were often burnt upon the same pyre. (Tac., Ann., 16.13)³⁷.

• Only a few years later, in 77 AD, a horrible disease broke out in Rome according to the Chronicon of Saint Jerome (Hieronymus). The author, who admittedly wrote much later (his life spanned the period c. 347–420 AD) reports that some ten thousand victims were registered in the ephemeris (an official register) during many successive days: lues ingens Romae facta ita ut per multos dies in efemeridem decem milia ferme mortuorum hominum referrentur (Hieron., Chron., 188 H.). Pestilence under Vespasian is reported also in the XII Sibylline Oracle (Orac. Sibyl. 12.114).

• An almost contemporary event, dated to 79 AD, is narrated in the Life of Titus by Suetonius, who surely had direct access to official reports and had encountered witnesses of the epidemic. He describes “a plague, of a ferocious nature hardly ever before encountered” (item pestilentia quanta non temere alias; Suet., Tit., 8.3). Cassius Dio provides a reference to the same event (66.23.5). The recovery from the epidemic was extremely difficult: medendae valetudini leniendisque morbis nullam divinam humanamque opem non adhibuit inquisito omni sacrificiorum remediorumque genere (Suet., Tit., 8.4)³⁸.

Inspired by these literary passages, one might well ask why no one ever talks about the “Vespasianic Plague”, the one of the years 77-79 (in the context of which one could also voice the suspicion that Jerome, or less likely Suetonius, was mistaken about the date, and that both accounts concern the same event). And why has no one organized a conference focusing on the “Effects of the Vespasianic Plague”? Were not the Antonine Plague and the other plagues for which we now have a particular “label” merely parts of a regular series of ancient deadly diseases, so that it would be wrong to attribute too much weight to any particular episode of that continuum? If so, undue explanatory power is credited to the Antonine Plague and the two other much-debated pandemics³⁹.

Replies to these objections can be found. First, the literary sources for the “Vespasianic Plague” are, all considered, not numerous. No references to this epidemic have been found in the fairly rich literature of the Flavian period or the subsequent period except for what was quoted above. Second, historians study their sources with a critical mindset and are well aware of the tendency to exaggerate in reports of past events. Claims of “never before encountered” cannot automatically be accepted, and round numbers like “ten thousand daily…for many days” do not inspire confidence either. Such a mortality would correspond to more than one percent of Rome’s population per day, and something like ten percent in only one week; an improbable situation⁴⁰.

The epigraphic sources as proxies for the impact of the Antonine Plague

When it comes to our literary sources, they contain much more material concerning the Antonine Plague than they do about the “Neronian Plague” or the “Vespasianic” one. This information concerns a period of over twenty years, from Marcus Aurelius well into the reign of Commodus, but modern epidemiology shows that global pandemics consist of successive waves.

Important for the debate about the Antonine Plague is that the literary sources have been complemented by epigraphic and papyrological evidence (while I know of no similar effort regarding the putative epidemics of the late first century CE). Credit for this is owed Duncan-Jones and his 1996 contribution, which primarily focused on Egypt (using papyri, including some material unknown to Gilliam⁴¹) and Italy (using inscriptions and some archaeological evidence). In his engagement with Gilliam’s article from twenty-five years before, the Cambridge scholar argued that the most extravagant claims in the literary sources did not exaggerate the severity of the Antonine Plague.

The logic of the argument was as follows: if the mortality of the plague was high, this will have had serious consequences for every aspect of Roman Italy’s social and economic life. There should be a corresponding collapse in features or social processes that could be measured, such as the production of certain necessities and investments in the building industry. Duncan-Jones believed that he had found a series of proxy data that confirmed the catastrophic nature of the plague in Roman Italy, as well as in some other regions, after c. 165 AD.

This argument paid little attention to the historical context in which the pandemic, which undoubtedly arrived in Rome in the fall of 166, needs to be situated. After all, an epidemic, even a very deadly one, in Italy was not the only trouble facing the Roman emperor and his government in 166 and during the next several years. The Parthian war had just been victoriously concluded, to be sure, but even though some war booty was won, the war had undoubtedly consumed valuable resources. After a very brief breathing pause, the Northern Wars began and continued practically without interruption until the death of the emperor in 180 AD, and in between there was the revolt of Avidius Cassius in the East. Moreover, during the 170s Roman forces were engaged in repeatedly fighting against invading Mauri in Spain while also campaigning in Mauretania⁴². Therefore, if some statistical series show signs of an economic or social downturn under the emperor Marcus – but, as already mentioned above, several of Duncan-Jones’s charts from 1996 have been shown to be misleading and/or based on incomplete data⁴³ – it would be daring to claim that we are here witnessing an impact of the Antonine Plague alone. The wars, with the ensuing strains on the economy and a manpower shortage, are a sufficient explanation for any reduction in, for instance, public building in Italy. To express the situation in one sentence: statistical evidence based on inscriptions is ill-suited for a monocausal explanation⁴⁴.

Duncan-Jones returned to the Antonine Plague in 2018 in a contribution which largely followed the structure of the 1996 article. The Egyptian evidence received particular attention, but without acknowledging the critical contributions by Bagnall and Elliott (above note 19)⁴⁵. New were reports of mass graves and evidence of industrial collapse retrieved from Greenland ice cores; these questions will be discussed below. In sum, the contribution in my view did little to bolster the “maximalist” viewpoint⁴⁶.

In principle, one cannot exclude that one day some local epigraphic chronicle will be found that could document the impact of a pandemic locally, with numbers and details that would allow scholars to draw meaningful and more general conclusions. But at the moment we lack such evidence, with the possible exception of the well-known album from Virunum (in the province of Noricum, near Klagenfurt in Austria), dated to 184 AD. The text does not describe the cause, but merely uses the expression mortalitatis causa (“on account of death”, which very likely means “sudden, unexpected death”), and it only refers to the members of the Mithraic cult in question (AE 1994, 1334). The inscription also indicates that five of the thirty-four original members, or almost fifteen percent, died during the previous year-and-a-half; to be sure, a death rate higher than expected⁴⁷. These deaths are dated some eighteen years after the plague reached Rome (which is distant c. 800 km) and some fifteen years after the plague, according to the physician Galen, harassed the Roman army in winter quarters at Aquileia (some 200 km from Virunum, across the Alps). Are we sure that the same pathogen was the cause in all three instances? This is the kind of fuzzy precision which is achieved when working with epigraphic evidence.

To be sure, two other instances of “demographic evidence” are usually brought into the discussion by those who hold that the Antonine Plague was a catastrophic event on an unparalleled scale. On the one hand, there are several records on stone of soldiers who were released from service after serving twenty-five years (so-called laterculi which record the honesta missio of the soldiers in a given year). Already Gilliam was aware of the evidence, which includes a laterculus from 195 AD listing soldiers from the legio VII Claudia who had been enrolled in the year 169 (CIL, III, 14057 from Viminacium in Moesia Superior). The recent discovery of a fragment belonging to this very inscription increased the number of retiring soldiers to over 270. According to Werner Eck, the extraordinary large number of new recruits in 169 AD (over twice as many as could be expected in a normal year), cannot be explained by losses in battles against the northern enemies of Rome; an argument which is not immediately self-evident. Nor can one assume, argued Eck, that the legio. VII Claudia at the outset of 169 AD found itself depleted for any number of other reasons (army units are regularly below their official strength) and therefore recruited heavily, since it would have been utterly negligent for the legion not to prepare for the Northern war already in 167 or 168. Therefore, heavy mortality due to the Antonine Plague during the previous year or two represents the most likely explanation for the recruitment drive in 169⁴⁸. This interpretation can obviously not be excluded, but other factors may well have played a role too⁴⁹.

Furthermore, the situation in the Athenian Aeropagus in 174/175 AD is often cited as proof that another demographic group sustained heavy losses on account of the Antonine Plague. In his reply to a request from Athens, the emperor Marcus agreed to reduce the requirement that members of the Aeropagus descend from three generations of freeborn ancestors. This decision has been taken as proof that the plague had so depleted the upper ranks of society that a change with dramatic implications for the social structure of the city had become necessary. It is noteworthy that the emperor’s letter does not refer to any illness or disease, it merely mentions the impact of fate or chance as grounds for the prevailing situation⁵⁰. Clearly, blaming the Antonine Plague for the development of Athenian society is merely one possible explanation (and at best likely only a partial one). If anything, it is remarkable that Athens thus far had managed to avoid admitting even remote descendants of freedmen into the Areopagus. The towns of Roman Italy had already much earlier permitted the sons and grandsons of freedmen to assume municipal leadership roles⁵¹.

Finally, there is also demographic evidence which shows the opposite trend, i.e. a stable situation. It has escaped scholarly notice that the closest we come to studying the population of a controlled environment is constituted by the group of senators who had been appointed for life as sodales Antoniniani. This priesthood was created in 161 AD for the purpose of managing the cult of Divus Pius, the previous emperor, and all fourteen members are known by name. It is often stated as a fact that due to the plague’s ferocious nature, a large part of the Roman elite perished; what can be said about the fate of the sodales Antoniniani? Various prosopographical evidence allow us to state that all fourteen were alive in 166, one probably died in 168, another passed away c. 169, but ten men were definitely still alive at the time. At least seven were undoubtedly alive after 170 (while only two are known to have passed away by that date). Future prosopographical discoveries may allow us to extend the study even further. When considering this material, one obviously needs to consider common demographic patterns. At their appointment in 161, almost all senators were former consuls and therefore at least into their forties. It is clear that not everyone could be expected to be present at the tenth anniversary of the college. In fact, according to model life tables, if we take a group of fourteen men each 45 years of age (a reasonable average for the sodales), a decade later only ten of them would still be around⁵². Therefore, a study of this clearly defined population, minuscule though it be, shows no impact of the Antonine Plague.

Epigraphic and other proxy data pointing to a less than catastrophic impact of the Antonine Plague

A case for a limited rather than catastrophic impact of the Antonine Plague can be made using additional both epigraphic and literary evidence, as will be seen next⁵³.

(1) Information from the Black Death shows that during periods of heavy suffering, societies were unable to uphold regular practices such as record keeping. At Rome, a city which, situated in the centre of a world-wide network, is considered to have been very severely impacted by the Antonine Plague, the Fratres Arvales, a group of senators with specific religious duties, continued to hold meetings and perform rituals throughout the 160s and 170s AD, as shown by the surviving fragments of the marble tablets used to record the “minutes”⁵⁴.

(2) Also religious issues have been probed with the help of epigraphic evidence, with the intention of showing the enormous gravity of the Antonine Plague. One of the most typical types of public inscriptions in the Roman world consists of dedications to various gods. Aesculapius/Asklepios was the god of healing, but Apollo was relevant as well, presumably ever since releasing the many fatal arrows at the Greeks before Troy. Not surprisingly, the Historia Augusta, composed some two centuries after the Antonine Plague, mentions that Marcus Aurelius instante sane adhuc pestilentia et deorum cultum diligentissime restituit (SHA., v. M. Ant., 21.6; “when the plague continued to rage he very meticulously restored the cult of the gods”). However, here scholars ought to take note of the fact that there is no perceptible increase in dedications to these two gods from the 160s forward, an argument which of course might be deflected by saying that the collapse of local societies was so complete that the resources for erecting monuments of stone were lacking⁵⁵. In Alain Cadotte’s study of the thirty-two known dedications to Aesculapius in North Africa there is no clear concentration in the late-Antonine period, while Gil Renberg’s investigation of forty-one instances of the cult of Aesculapius in Rome likewise shows no peak during the period of the Antonine Plague⁵⁶.

(3) A pandemic causing unprecedented mortality and returning in wave after wave during a period of two decades or more might well lead to new legislation concerning, for instance, funerary practices, inheritances, and the situation of orphans. Indeed, a government measure which potentially could serve as a tell-tale indication of the severity of the Antonine plague was identified a quarter-century ago by Anthony Birley. As far as I am aware this hypothesis has made little or no impact on the discussion of the plague, as indeed has the critical discussion of Birley’s proposal published in Italian in 2012. A brief summary seems warranted. Based on a survey of the legislation emanating from the court of Marcus Aurelius first during the joint reign of Marcus and Lucius Verus (three rescripts) and then during his sole reign (two rescripts) which were concerned with the proper burial of corpses, Birley concluded that these enactments “reflect the increase in the death rate and difficulties over burial” and that “naturally a good deal of legal activity of the time was concerned with the plague and its effects”⁵⁷. However, a closer look at the many legal enactments from the reign of Marcus Aurelius which are preserved in our sources – a task to which Birley dedicated almost seven pages in his earlier and authoritative biography of the emperor, while he discussed the funerary enactments on less than one page – does in no way give the picture that Marcus’ reign would for the most part have been suffering from a lethal pandemic⁵⁸.

(4) In the polytheistic Roman empire, the monotheistic Christians constituted the true “Other”. It is well-known how in situations of great crisis marginal groups are treated as scapegoats, as happened to the Jews in much of Europe during the Black Death. The refusal of the early Christian congregations to acknowledge the divine nature of the ruling Emperor and to worship the many gods who protected the Roman people endangered the pax deorum. A catastrophic Antonine Plague should have given rise to a sustained anti-Christian rhetoric, probably accompanied by persecutions. One may note how a recently discovered letter by Antoninus Pius to the Ephesians, who suffered from the effects of an earthquake, in Christopher Jones’s convincing interpretation shows how the emperor addressed the hostility towards the Christians that this natural catastrophe had elicited⁵⁹. However, during the decades when the Antonine Plague is thought to have circulated, there is no trace of ideological or administrative attacks from the side of the authorities which would go beyond the unease already visible in the famous correspondence between Pliny and the emperor Trajan (Plin., Ep., 10.96-97)⁶⁰. Nor can one find any trace thereof in the many Christian apologetical writings of the late second century and the following centuries, even though St. Augustine as late as in the fourth century quipped pluvia deficit, causa Christiani (De civ. D. 2.3; “when it does not rain, it is the fault of the Christians”)⁶¹.

If it had been common to blame the Christians for the Antonine Plague, one would expect the Christian intellectuals, who defended their religion in a series of apologetical treatises, to address this issue too. But that is not the case. The known texts of the five Christian authors who were contemporaries of Marcus Aurelius (Apollinaris of Hierapolis, Melito of Sardis, Athenagoras of Athens, Tatianus, and Miltiades), not to mention the later writings of Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Origenes, and St. Cyprian, are silent about the Antonine Plague and any attacks on Christians in that particular connection⁶². Tertullian does not deny that the Christians were persecuted, but like Augustine much later, he primarily identifies other reasons:

Si Tiberis ascendit in moenia, si Nilus non ascendit in arva, si caelum stetit, si terra movit, si fames, si lues, statim: ‘Christianos ad leonem!’ acclamatur. (Tert. Apol. 40.2)

If the Tiber rises to the city walls, if the Nile does not water the fields, if heaven gives no rain, if there is an earthquake, if there is a famine, a plague, immediately the cry is ‘The Christians to the lion!’

While lues, “plague” or “pestilence”, is mentioned as one possible trigger for persecutions, it is noteworthy that the eventuality ranks last in Tertullian’s list. In sum, the Christian authors, many of whom contemporaries and others writing soon after the late-Antonine period, provide no indication that the impact of the Antonine Plague had been catastrophic.

The oracle of Claros

A lively debate has focused on about a dozen almost identical inscriptions with the text dis deabusque secundum interpretationem oraculi Clari Apollinis (“to the gods and goddesses, according to an interpretation/response of the oracle of Apollo at Claros”). Christopher Jones has gained much traction for his suggestion that this unique series of inscriptions, of which examples have been found in several provinces and in Italy, is the result of an imperial mandate issued by Marcus Aurelius which aimed at placating the gods in a situation of a rampant deadly plague⁶³. It should be noted that none of the inscriptions has been dated with any kind of precision; the texts themselves contain no explicit or implicit dating criteria.

Interestingly enough, the Greek author Lukianos of Samosata refers to somewhat similar events in his work Alexander the False Prophet, as pointed out by Jones. In this text by the Greek satirist, we are told that the emperor Marcus consulted Alexander, who gave out oracular answers at Abonouteichos in Paphlagonia, although not about the plague, but about the war along the Danube (Lucian, Alex., 48). That same text also reports, in an earlier context, that the prophet himself spread a promotional message throughout the empire declaring that he knew how to ward off plagues, conflagrations, and earthquakes (Lucian, Alex., 36). This passage is followed by a more specific claim, that “during the plague” the prophet sent out an oracular response to all nations with the content that Phoebus (Apollo) should ward off the plague. This Greek verse was to be inscribed above doorways as protection (Lucian, Alex., 36).

Out of these elements – the unique series of diis deabusque inscriptions, Marcus’ consultation of Alexander at Abonouteichos about the Northern war, and Alexander’s advice that people should fasten a Greek prayer to Apollo above their door as a protection against an ongoing plague – Jones fashioned the suggestion that Marcus Aurelius consulted the oracle of Apollo at Claros about the Antonine Plague, and that as a result he (or perhaps “some official body such as the pontifices”) mandated that inscriptions in stone with a dedication to “all gods and goddesses” should be erected. This series of events, in Jones’s view, shows the catastrophic nature of the Antonine Plague.

A number of experts on Greco-Roman religion and epigraphy have participated in a vast discussion which involves much more material than the diis deabusque inscriptions, and the problems inherent in the above scenario are many. Of this there is no trace in the writings of many a scholar who has been satisfied with merely quoting Jones’s hypothesis; it is indeed arduous to follow the debate about the Antonine Plague as it has developed during the past two decades⁶⁴. This is not the place for a detailed summary of the discussion (for which see Bruun 2012), but one may add that besides the patent differences between what Lukianos tells us and what the known evidence contains, there are concerns about the locations where the diis deabusque inscriptions were found and about the date of the epigraphic evidence⁶⁵.

Doubts were raised about the relevance of the diis deabusque inscriptions for the Antonine Plague also in a contribution by Angelos Chaniotis on “megatheism” (as he calls it), in which a different scenario was plausibly delineated. An ideological trend favourable to the cult of a supreme god during the second half of the second century AD (known from the theosophical oracle of Apollo Klarios) is seen as constituting the ideological background for the encouragement to acknowledge the wider spectrum of traditional polytheism. In the invocation of the anonymous dii and deae we are dealing with “reconciling traditional religion with the rising popularity of monotheistic tendencies”. The priests at Claros may well have sent out a message to that effect⁶⁶.

In a new contribution from 2016, Jones did not further bolster his argument regarding the diis deabusque inscriptions but instead analyzed the Greek inscription on an amulet recently found in London. The text clearly refers to a plague (loimós), and Jones found clear similarities with the message which Lukianos tells us that Alexander sent out to the world (in particular, “long-haired Apollo” appears in both texts)⁶⁷. There is no doubt that the amulet refers to a plague, but instead of supporting Jones’s interpretation of the diis deabusque inscriptions, the new text lends support to an alternative argument.

How reliable is Lukianos’ account? He was, after all, a satirist, not even an historian. In order to make his case, Jones was compelled to assume that Lukianos weaved his account of Alexander the false prophet out of historical elements that he thoroughly remade. If in fact the empire-wide message in Alex. 36 about appealing to longhaired Apollo is now substantiated by the amulet from London, why should we not also take seriously the notice that Marcus Aurelius approached Alexander (or some other oracle) about the Northern war (and not about the plague, as Jones assumed)?

For us, with our modern sensibilities, and with hindsight illuminated by the Black Death and even by the COVID-19 coronavirus, it might seem natural that the plague should be foremost on the emperor’s mind. But plagues and diseases were recurrent and practically endemic, and who could blame the emperor for them? A foreign war on the doorstep of Italy was a completely different matter. Rome was used to victories and a defeat was unthinkable; every divine assistance ought to be sought.

Precisely this mentality is revealed in an interesting verse inscription from Artena in Latium, some thirty km from Rome, discussed first by Mika Kajava and then by Wolfgang Dieter Lebek. The poem, on six lines, ends with the pious prayer that almighty Juppiter, who allowed the Roman state and Latium to grow strong, might give a stable and vigorous/fertile peace: [Qui r]em Romanam Latiumq(ue) au[gescere f(ecit)] / [is] pacem stabilitam et viride[m faciat!]⁶⁸. We are dealing with nothing more than a single inscription, but the text reminds us that the question of peace (and war) could be of primary interest even as far from the battle fields as in southern Latium.

The evidence derived from the Greek physician Galen, an eye witness (part I)

When discussing the literary evidence for the Antonine Plague particular attention should arguably be paid to the Greek physician Galen (Galenos), the most famous practitioner of his profession during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and one of the foremost physicians of the Classical world altogether. He ought to be of the greatest importance for any evaluation of the Antonine Plague, since he was an eyewitness on frequent occasions and treated many patients suffering from the plague⁶⁹. Galen was a trained observer of symptoms and he provided accounts of his observations in his writings. And there is more: his literary patrimony has not yet been exhausted, since new texts of his are still today being discovered. A previously unpublished treatise, Peri alypias (“Avoiding Distress”; the Latin De indolentia is often used) was found as recently as in 2005 and received its editio princeps two years later⁷⁰. No one can foresee what may yet be revealed about the Antonine Plague in some long-lost passage of Galen.

Here something of a confession must be inserted: In my first draft of this paper I may have been guilty of not having consulted everything that could be of relevance for the argument. I am here referring to a new journal, called Galenos, one of the many Classics journals founded by the publishing house Fabrizio Serra from Pisa in recent years. When consulting the journal, of which the first issue appeared in 2007, the reader realizes that in the medieval and later manuscript tradition it is still possible to discover fragments and passages from Galen which previously were unknown. For instance, in 2009 an article containing five new fragments of Galen with translation and commentary was published by Vito Lorusso⁷¹. But in the University of Toronto’s Robarts library, one of the four largest in North America, the subscription to the journal Galenos does not continue past 2015. Therefore, in an earlier moment, much as I would have liked to, it proved impossible to consult an article by Luigi Orlandi in the issue from 2018 which announced the publication of two new fragments of Galen’s Commentary on Hippocrates’ ‘Epidemics Book VI’ in Par. Suppl. gr. 634⁷².

Ancient pandemics and modern sensationalism

Someone may consider it the height of irresponsibility to have drafted an article on the Antonine Plague while brazenly admitting that one had not consulted a recent article which deals with two newly discovered fragments of Galen, to boot two fragments which concern the Hippocratic text Epidemics Book VI. What if these fragments had contributed something essential to our understanding of the Antonine pandemic? (They did not, however.)

I felt then that this eventuality could categorically be excluded, and I have not changed my view. Why? That these new passages by Galen might have contributed anything to the discussion about the Antonine Plague could be excluded – even without reading the article – for the simple reason that if new evidence had been present, the news would have been featured on CNN and everywhere else in today’s media universe. The events of the recent past have convincingly shown that if any kind of sensationalism can be generated around an ancient pandemic such as the Antonine Plague, today’s news outlets will jump at the opportunity⁷³.

Above it was noted that one reason why modern scholars eagerly debate the pandemics of the Roman period is the existence of a large demand among the general public for such information and content. Proof of this is not difficult to find. In 2014, on the US website of CNN one could read a contribution carrying the headline “How an Apocalyptic Plague Helped Spread Christianity”, written by Candida Moss, at the time “Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity” at the University of Notre Dame in the state of Indiana⁷⁴. The article focused on the discovery, at Luxor in Egypt (ancient Thebes) of a tomb in which several bodies had been covered by a thick layer of lime, according to the author proof that we are dealing with the burial of victims of an epidemic. Nearby were found the traces of an enormous bonfire or pyre which according to Moss showed that many other victims of the same epidemic had been cremated. Thanks to pottery found on the site the ensemble could be dated to the mid-third century AD. This means that the evidence from Luxor concerns the Plague of St. Cyprian, mentioned in literary sources and a pandemic which according to these ancient sources caused five thousand deaths a day in Rome, while according to modern estimates two thirds of the population of Alexandria died – thus far CNN.

When first reading the article, I could not avoid – and I still cannot – a certain scepticism towards an argument which seems fairly vague and lacking firm proof. But the publication of the text on the website of CNN was certainly a triumph for the colleague from Notre Dame, who reached thousands of readers, which must also have pleased both the Dean of the faculty and the President of her university. However, mass media is not the place for carrying on a proper scholarly discussion: a contribution such as the one just cited cannot satisfy a serious historian; the argument contains too much speculation.

To follow this trail for a little longer, and briefly focusing on the Cyprianic Plague, what does Kyle Harper’s monograph tell us about the discovery from ancient Thebes? That work appeared three years after the article published by CNN and is dedicated to making the case for a pandemic in the mid-third century. Indeed on p. 137 the author mentions the discovery at Thebes, which appears to be the first proof of the spread of the plague, thought to have originated further south, in Ethiopia⁷⁵. But the story told by the Theban site receives only seven lines, perhaps because the interpretation was considered incontrovertible, having been advanced by the archaeologist responsible for the discovery, Francesco Tiradritti, in 2014. Yet that crucial report was no longer than four pages, which, considering the potential significance of the discovery, might seem rather thin.

A few years after forming this opinion, my doubts were expressed in a much more rigorous form in a valuable review of Harper’s monograph by a team of scholars. According to Halton, Elton, Huebner, Izdebski, Mordechai, and Newfield, the part of Harper’s argument which is based on the discovery at Thebes/Luxor is unconvincing⁷⁶. This conclusion is noteworthy because we are dealing with an important part of the argument for the existence of the “Cyprianic Plague” and its origin in Egypt⁷⁷.

This is not the place to further engage with the discussion concerning the mid-third century; my main purpose in referring to the discovery at Luxor was to show how central questions in our work might receive superficial attention in contemporary mass media⁷⁸.

More on the evidence provided by Galen; the clinical nature of the Antonine Plague

After this brief excursus into the mid-third century, we return to the physician Galen, important in the context of the Antonine Plague because of his surviving texts and his great familiarity with the disease, because some long-lost and relevant writings of his may still turn up one day, and even because of how he himself behaved.

In the L’impatto della Peste Antonina Alfredina Storchi Marino analyzed Galen’s comments on the plague. She concluded that in his view, the disease was severe, although the physician nowhere presented an exhaustive analysis of the plague and its progress⁷⁹. It might seem surprising that the greatest physician of the age, who frequently was in contact with infected patients, did not provide humanity with a proper account of the disease, but Storchi Marino suggested that this account would have appeared in his now lost commentary on the plague of Athens, which famously was described by Thucydides⁸⁰.

The description of the plague’s symptoms provided by Galen, incomplete though it may be, has led several scholars to suggest that the disease was caused by the smallpox virus (Variola maior); this was first proposed by the two Littmans, who approached the question based on their own medical training⁸¹. In the 2012 volume edited by Lo Cascio the hypothesis of smallpox received strong support and was further elaborated by Yan Zelener, whose PhD thesis on the subject at Columbia University was supervised by William Harris⁸².

In recent years the diagnosis of smallpox has been frequently quoted, with one notable exception, the Cambridge scholar Rebecca Flemming, an authority on ancient medicine. In a contribution from a few years ago, Flemming included several references to Galen’s newly discovered text Peri alypias (De indolentia; “Avoiding Distress”), mentioned above, but more consequential for her were certain passages in the great physician’s De methodo medendi, a text which previously had been carefully read by generations of modern scholars⁸³. The latter text contains the description of some clinical cases of patients who suffered from the “plague” but were cured thanks to the attention of Galen, and Flemming reached the conclusion that the diagnosis of smallpox is untenable. Above all the absence of any references to the “indelible scarring, the disfiguring facial pockmarks” speaks against smallpox in the form it is known to the modern world. Also, smallpox is known to attack only humans, but some ancient sources mention that also animals were affected by the disease. Unable to propose a distinct alternative diagnosis, Flemming brought up the possibility of some now extinct archaeovirus being the pathogen. She admitted the speculative nature of her proposal, while stressing that the theory of smallpox is equally speculative as long as we lack genetic material of the pathogen which caused havoc during the reign of Marcus Aurelius⁸⁴. One may note that a much milder form of smallpox, Variola minor, leads to pockmarks only among some 7% of the survivors (against 75% for Variola maior), and that it has a mortality rate of c. 1%⁸⁵. To perhaps complicate the picture further, it needs to be mentioned that since a few years back, it has become clear that the Yersinia pestis bacterium was present in Europe already in the fourth millennium BC, although it may well have been less virulent than in later periods. The ancestor of a case from Latvia was dated to c. 5,000 BC.⁸⁶

It is important to realize that even if the diagnosis of smallpox could be proven to be correct through the discovery of genetic material of the pathogen, the character of the pandemic, the mortality, and therefore its impact, still remains to be analyzed. Diseases change over time because of genetic modifications. The recent fairly sensational identification of the Variola virus in an individual from Lithuania who died in the seventeenth century has changed the view of how the virus developed historically and has even raised doubts as to whether a lethal form of smallpox existed in Roman times⁸⁷.

The lack of an exhaustive account by Galen of the plague that he witnessed has led some scholars to focus on the movements of the physician; actions may speak louder than words. It is known that in the summer of 166 AD, around the time when, but probably just before, the plague reached Rome, Galen left the capital for his native Pergamon. The good doctor attempted to escape the plague, it has been said, because he was well aware of its deadly nature⁸⁸. However, the German scholar Heinrich Schlange-Schöningen reached a different conclusion, namely, that Galen travelled for personal reasons of a different kind, to oversee property he possessed back home in Asia Minor. This work appears to have received too little attention among students of the Antonine Plague, regardless of the fact that Schlange-Schöningen’s convincing argument has been cited in several later contributions⁸⁹.

What, then, did Galen really think of the plague, not least in terms of how lethal and destructive it was? In this place, there is room only for a general remark followed by a discussion of the newly discovered Peri alypias⁹⁰. First, it is noteworthy that Galen, by far our best contemporary witness, conceives of a series of cases he observed or treated from the mid-160s to the early 190s as victims of the same illness. In his view, he was observing one long-lasting Mediterranean pandemic, and of course this is the modern opinion too.

Second, Galen’s recently discovered text “Avoiding Distress” is worth closer attention. This work was written in early 193 AD, after experiencing a more or less lethal pandemic during a quarter-century. If the “maximalist” view of the effects of the Antonine Plague is accurate, how would the plague not colour everything anyone has to say on the subject of “distress” in the year 193? And yet Galen only refers to the plague on two occasions.

“Avoiding Distress” is divided in eighty-four short sections, and in Vivian Nutton’s translation it covers almost twenty-three pages, although half of that space is taken up by useful notes on the text⁹¹. The treatise has the form of a letter, written in reply to an anonymous friend inquiring about the secret behind Galen’s imperturbability when facing misfortunes that would cause distress in others. Three instances, or perhaps more accurately five or six, are mentioned. First, the friend was present when, during a bout of the plague in Rome (the date is unclear), almost all of Galen’s slaves died. At the time, the friend was struck by the physician’s equanimity while hearing that he had behaved with equal stoicism when three or four times previously suffering “similar severe loss of property”. Finally, Galen seems to imply that the friend is also aware of how bravely the doctor was bearing his most recent loss, which “surpasses everything that has gone before”, namely, that “all that I had stored in the warehouses by the Sacred Way was destroyed in the Great Fire” (sections 1-2). This is the fire of 192 AD, while Galen is writing in early 193.

From there Galen moves on to give an account of his recent losses: more important than his silver, gold, and documents recording loans were a vast number of important texts, a variety of pharmaceutical drugs, medical instruments, and his own notes on scholarly texts. No wonder that in the past, intellectuals who suffered similar losses died of depression, Galen comments (3-7)! Next, Galen explains how he came to entrust such a large part of his possessions to these storage facilities (8-12a), while concerning his losses he repeats that “I bore this thing very easily, not being disturbed for a moment” (11). The following twenty-five sections are dedicated to providing details about the lost texts and about notes and discoveries Galen had made while studying in his own library (12b-37). The text is fascinating for a variety of reasons, but with one minor exception it reveals nothing about the plague or its impact. In section 38 Galen returns to the topic at hand, stating “I was not grieved like other men at the loss of such a variety of possessions, any of which by itself would have made other men extremely distressed”. This occurs just after, in sections 34-35, Galen mentioned meeting his former schoolmate Teuthras in Rome when he first arrived there (in the year 166). The encounter was important because through his friend Galen acquired some valuable medical recipes: “Teuthras, who died in the first visitation of the plague, left them to me a little while after what I said was my first arrival in Rome” (35).

The passage just cited is the second and last time that the plague is mentioned in “Avoiding Distress”. Next follow sections 38-48, by Nutton labelled “Philosophical remedies for distress”, after which Galen provides some autobiographical details about his education and a short reflection on life during the reign of Commodus (49-57). The crimes committed by that emperor (murdered on 31 December 192), were “worse than any in the whole of recorded history” (44). Education is considered important when it comes to adopting a stoic stance in the face of adversities, and so Galen writes about his own relatively affluent ancestry and how his upbringing was beneficial in fostering that attitude (58-68).

In section 69 Galen already considers his friend’s question to have been answered, but, reflecting, he realizes that he may have given the impression that he never cares about anything. There he misjudges his readers, since many a modern student cannot but come away from reading “Avoiding Distress” thinking that Galen is wholly and exclusively fixated on his own possessions, while doing his utmost to appear not to care. In any case, Galen could certainly imagine catastrophes that might one day rattle him: “What will distress me is the ruination of my fatherland, or a friend being punished by a tyrant, and other similar things, and I pray to the gods that none of this should ever happen to me. So since nothing of this sort has ever happened to me until now, you have thus never seen me distressed” (72).

What kind of person would write such a treatise on “Avoiding Distress”, when – if we are to follow those who hold the maximalist view of the effect of the Antonine Plague – any recipient of the text during the past quarter century has seen one in four persons around them dying of the horrible merciless new pandemic⁹²? And the situation was obviously compounded by regular mortality, always much higher than in modern western societies. And yet nothing about mourning the dead in “Avoiding Distress”?! We could obviously apply a psychologizing approach to Galen and explain that as probably the most learned physician of his time, he was fixated on intellectual pursuits and above all felt duty bound to uphold Greco-Roman civilization – just like any driven modern Classics scholar. While deep inside he had a beating heart and in his private life demonstrated every sensitivity one could ask for.

Galen may have been such a man, be that as it may, but in his “Avoiding Distress”, written after experiencing over twenty-five years of the Antonine pandemic, one does not receive the impression that the plague, lethal though it certainly could be, had been the earth-shattering experience that one finds in the account of many a modern scholar^93.

Archaeology and the natural sciences

In the previous section the discussion of the evidence provided by Galen, such as it is, brought modern medical science into play⁹⁴. Progress when applying this approach requires physical evidence, be it in ever so small quantities which can only be studied in a laboratory. Physical evidence is also what archaeologists use, and this section will evaluate two potentially important ways in which contributions can be made by archaeologists and by scientists working in fields other than the biosciences.

Not least thanks to the discovery and excavation of mass graves in England dating to the medieval Black Death, modern scholars are aware that such evidence can be expected in connection with ancient pandemics and can indeed be used as an argument for the very existence of a world-wide lethal disease. Pioneering work on identifying mass graves which can be dated to Late Antiquity and with some degree of certainty can be related to the Justinianic Plague has been carried out by Michael McCormick⁹⁵.

In his contribution from 2018, Duncan-Jones referred to “a large number of mass burials from the Roman period”, commenting that “Some may well belong to the Antonine Plague”⁹⁶. While I can find no evidence for such an early date among the 55 documented sites with mass burials that McCormick presented in 2016 (nor are there any in his Appendix, which contains less well studied material)⁹⁷, Duncan-Jones pointed to a single possible case of a late-Antonine mass burial, found in the catacomb of the Saints Marcellinus and Peter in Rome. The first reports of the excavation from some two decades ago, based on the study of several hundred individuals, seemed to exclude a chronology that fit the Antonine Plague (i.e. 165–180 AD).⁹⁸ Since then, the archaeological work has continued to uncover the remains of ever more burials. Today the team which continues to excavate the site, in which possibly the remains of some 2,500 additional bodies await analysis (in addition to the c. seven hundred that have been studied), has been able to establish — using C14 dating — three approximate periods when the site was used for mass burials: 28/132, 80/250 and 140/380 AD⁹⁹. To be sure, taking the mid-points of these three periods, we seem to be looking almost exactly at the “Vespasianic Plague” (on which above), the Antonine one, and the Plague of St. Cyprian.

In their cautious discussion of the currently available results, the French team emphasizes the importance of finding genetic material that would allow the identification of the pathogen(s) that evidently caused these mass deaths in Rome (violence or natural catastrophes do not seem as likely causes). In principle, several diseases may have been at the origin of the three periods of exceptional mortality, including typhus, dysentery, and measles¹⁰⁰. In any case, there is a clear probability that some of the mass burials could belong to the later reign of Marcus Aurelius and the immediately following period.

In the context of Roman mass graves, also a discovery at Gloucester (Roman Glevum) in Britain deserves a few words. The excavators of the site, which yielded the partial remains of at least ninety-one individuals, were not able to date the finds with any precision, but they pointed to certain objects that made a date at the end of the second century CE or the early third rather likely. Therefore the possibility that the deceased were victims of the Antonine Plague was suggested; other scholars have raised doubts.¹⁰¹

The second potentially important contribution to our understanding of the Antonine Plague comes from scientists who have investigated ice cores in Greenland during the past decades; early results were published in the mid-1990s¹⁰². A new stage seems to have been reached when in 2018 Joseph McConnell, Andrew Wilson, and seven collaborators presented “Nearly contiguous, subannually resolved new measurements of lead pollution in Greenland ice”, derived from an over four hundred metres deep ice core which allowed the team to study lead pollution from 1135 BC to 1257 AD. The team pointed out that the resolution was far higher than in previous studies, with an “estimated overall uncertainty of 1 to 2 y(ears) during antiquity”, but also that the results generally agreed with earlier measurements taken at other sites in Greenland¹⁰³.

For the present discussion, of major importance is the conclusion that “The Antonine plague emerges as an abrupt transition marking the end of high lead emissions in Europe and ushering in a period of much lower lead-silver production lasting more than five centuries”¹⁰⁴. The text is illustrated with two figures tracing lead measurements in Greenland ice which obviously cannot reveal finer details, since they both span the period from 1000 BC to 800 AD. (The year-by-year measurements are found in an impressively massive SI attachment, on which below.) Even so, the graphs show peaks and dips and even with a bare eye some trends can be identified. It is clear that there was a sustained peak before and during the early second century AD, after which the values generally fall and indeed reach a low in the last quarter of the century. Thereafter, there are ups and downs, sometimes with considerable changes, but no clear upward trend until c. 600¹⁰⁵.

In Fig. 3 the period which produced high lead emissions and straddled the year 100 AD is labelled “Pax Romana”. It is indeed characteristic of the paper that conspicuous features of the graph are consistently explained by referring to events from Roman history – evidence as good as any that without the narrative literary sources the study of ancient pandemics would largely amount to groping in the dark (as stressed above in section 4). The logic is clear: if every peak and dip in lead pollution (which depends on silver and lead production) can be explained based on what we know of Roman history, then also the explanation for the low values from the last quarter of the second century AD can and must be sought within the context of Roman history. In the team’s view, that explanation is the cessation of Iberian mining activities caused by the Antonine plague.

Our knowledge of historical events during the Roman Republic and the Principate is rich and in the section “Historical Linkages” the team’s commentary is able to match practically every turn of the lead emission/pollution graph with a historical event. To give an idea of the linkages presented: lead pollution decreased c. 64 BC – that was the beginning of the First Punic War. Are we to understand that at the time neither Carthage’s colonies in Spain nor anyone else had an interest in trading for the silver produced in the Spanish mines and that therefore the mines, operated by the indigenous population, stood still? Later during the war, which lasted from 264 to 241, pollution increased – because now Carthage needed silver to pay its mercenaries. During the Second Punic War, lead emissions first declined but then rose – namely after Rome in 206 BC seized Carthaginian mining territories and evidently increased production¹⁰⁶.

Thus far the team’s commentary. Carthage seems to have persisted in the stubborn belief that silver is not needed when a state is at war. Or maybe not? The team does not seem to be aware of Pliny’s report that Hannibal while at Cartagena initiated a number of shafts in the mining region, one of which produced three hundred pounds of silver a day (Plin., Nat., 33.96-97). There ought to be a strong trace in the Greenland ice from 221 BC forward, for several years until the Romans captured the Carthaginian mining district. This is the opposite of what the graph shows¹⁰⁷.

The lead pollution in Greenland investigated by the team is overwhelmingly traced to the Iberian peninsula, while also events elsewhere in the Mediterranean are credited with influencing Spanish mining. Emissions sharply dropped after 125 BC, a process contemporary with, and evidently caused by, Roman warfare in southern France, against the Gallic Allobroges (124 BC), the Arverni (124-121), and the Cimbri and Teutones (104-101); thus the team¹⁰⁸. One misses an explanation for why these military campaigns would have affected mining activities in the very south of Spain, where the Rio Tinto mine and others belonging to the same large mineral deposit are situated.

Regardless of the “historical linkages” established by the team – as just seen, not always crystal clear during the Roman period – some questions remain (not surprisingly, considering the draconic page limits imposed on scholarly publications in the sciences): Why is it that by far the largest deposition of lead ever measured in antiquity occurred shortly after 700 BC and again two decades after 500 BC¹⁰⁹? And why is it that during four periods prior to the Roman arrival in Spain (around 900 BC, around 800, c. 430 and in the late 330s BC) the depositions almost rival the peaks during the late Republic and the Principate¹¹⁰? Are the explanations for why such is the verdict of the Greenland ice always to be sought in the state of the mining industry in Spain? If there are other factors impacting the lead deposits in the Greenland ice (the team presented arguments for why other factors should not have mattered), which are they and when would they have made an impact?

To return to the Antonine Plague, as already mentioned, the graphs of lead depositions and the SI data on depositions and emissions show a fairly steady decline from high measurements in the 60s AD and around 100 AD and the early second c. AD to the low levels during the last decades of the second century. There is a visible trend, and it would need to be explained as much as any sudden drop in the 170s¹¹¹. Also, certain fluctuations still seem to occur during the reign of Marcus and Commodus. If everyone was dead from the plague and the mining shafts were flooded, there should have been no smelting and no emissions.

Some attention ought indeed to be directed to the technology and economy of Spanish mining of silver (and lead). Andrew Wilson presented an illuminating discussion of precisely such matters in an earlier contribution, and Morris Silver contributed further thoughts in 2011, but presenting such considerations in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences was evidently, and regrettably, not possible¹¹². Setting out from Wilson’s work, Silver pointed out that in southern Spain, where mining took place in deep shafts, the mines would have been flooded once the draining of the ground water with mechanical devices had been interrupted due to the incursion of Mauri and the Antonine Plague. The author did not doubt the effect of the plague, but he argued that ultimately it was the high cost of labour, with wages much increased due to the loss of life (as is to be expected after a plague, and as was the case after the Black Death), that must have made it prohibitively expensive to restart silver (and lead) mining in the south of the peninsula, even if the mine shafts could have been drained¹¹³.

One wishes for more clarity in the technological aspect of the matter, but more than anything else it seems to me that the incursions of the Mauri ought to be included in the argument. Indeed, twenty years ago Wilson, referring to research by G.D.B. Jones, considered attacks by the Mauri as the likely prime reason for the cessation of the mining at Rio Tinto and elsewhere after c. 170 AD¹¹⁴.

Such a sequence of events is highly plausible, it seems to me. Since silver and other valuable metals were being mined at Rio Tinto and in the surrounding district, there was undoubtedly security personnel on site to guard against local bandits and robbers. But the region must have been wholly unprepared when a raiding party from Mauretania arrived on the shores of southern Spain in the immediate vicinity of the mining district. Surely consisting of a several hundreds and more likely a few thousand-armed men (considering the trouble the Roman authorities were to experience), the Mauri could hardly find a more inviting target than the mines and their storage vaults holding freshly processed bullion (besides silver also gold and copper¹¹⁵). Raiding the mines was undoubtedly quicker and more profitable than roaming the countryside in search of wealthy villas and their treasures (in the hope that these had not been hidden away by the owners), while attacking or laying siege on towns cost time and manpower¹¹⁶.

Having said this, new primary data, specifically from the Greenland and other ice cores, has an intrinsic value and must be paid careful attention. But to fully integrate measurements from literally thousands of years and create “historical linkages” with Roman and ancient Mediterranean history in a six-page article represents a phenomenal challenge. What one would wish for at this stage is a process which precisely the natural sciences pride themselves of: the replication of the outcome of a research project. By this I do not necessarily mean the taking of new samples of ice cores from Greenland and elsewhere. Rather, it would be interesting to see whether another team of experts, possibly with a different perspective, would be able to see different linkages and present a different narrative based on the same data that the team of McConnell, Wilson, and their colleagues had assembled. Such a different outcome certainly seems possible to me, based on the considerations presented above.

This is not to say that historical studies setting out from ice core analysis cannot be persuasive at a first read. A recent illuminating study by a team led by Christopher Loveluck (including the historian Michael McCormick) showed how the lead deposited in ice core from Colle Gnifetti in Switzerland quite accurately mirrored the ups and downs of lead production in Britain during a certain period of the high Middle Ages (c. 1170–1216)¹¹⁷. Essential to this study, however, were the extremely detailed records preserved in the English royal archives, which made it possible both to work out estimates of the annual lead production and to see how factors relating to taxation, trade, and war impacted the production¹¹⁸.

For a layman one enigma remains. The lead pollution from Britain travelled south-east to Switzerland, while the ancient lead pollution from southern Spain was brought north to Greenland, indeed over the British Isles. The former team based itself on “Atmospheric circulation visualisation using Climate Realanalyzer^TM”, while McConnell and his team used “the atmospheric transport and deposition model FLEXPART”¹¹⁹. Which of these methods is more reliable? How can we be certain that atmospheric conditions of the past have been accurately understood and charted?

The context of a pandemic: government policies and/or natural events

The previous section makes evident that an interdisciplinary approach, relying predominantly on data and theories presented by the natural sciences, is becoming ever more common in recent works on the Antonine plague (and on other epidemics of the past). Indeed, how could it be different? The historical context must never be left out of sight.

The question is how wide a net to cast. The partly still ongoing analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic may serve as something of a “model to think with”. To make progress on that topic, it is not enough to present a series of tables and numbers. Such data has to be discussed in the context of what went wrong and what was done right by the authorities, and which local factors might explain different results in different places. We must ask how local cultures, religious or political beliefs, and still other factors, conditioned the response and the behaviour of local populations, or indeed how different segments of any population may have experienced the pandemic very differently.

However, as far as I am aware, rarely (or ever?) in the discussion of the effects of COVID-19 is there a mention of El Niño or La Niña, the atmospheric turbulence which has its origin in the eastern Pacific Ocean and every year exercises a certain influence on the weather in North America and elsewhere too during the winter-half of the year. And indeed, the changes in the weather during the peak period of COVID-19 would seem to be fairly irrelevant when compared to the actions by government authorities and various civic organizations, and the impact of mass media and online influencers.

A number of recent studies of the Antonine plague, often written with a larger readership in mind, has pursued a different course, since the concrete actions that one can attribute to Roman central or regional authorities are few and rarely particularly unambiguous. One such measure, or one hypothetical such measure, was discussed above in section 7: the inscriptions referring to an oracular answer from Apollo’s shrine at Claros. According to one interpretation, these texts reveal a policy implemented by Marcus Aurelius with the aim of gaining relief from the pandemic which was ravaging the Roman world. But as argued above, the evidence for this interpretation is rather weak. Furthermore, as shown in section 6, imperial legislation under Marcus Aurelius concerning the burial of corpses has been explained as a result of the Antonine plague and as an indication of its catastrophic nature. However, a contextualization of the surviving legislation of the divi fratres Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, as well as the laws of Marcus as role ruler, shows no particular impact of the plague¹²⁰.

Leaving aside Roman administrative policies, several longer studies of Roman pandemics, including the Antonine plague which is the issue here, have instead focused on natural phenomena as the most relevant historical context. Although there were forerunners, Kyle Harper’s The Fate of Rome (2017) has set the tone, focusing on the climate, on climate change and the ensuing challenges of properly nourishing a growing population, and on the threat from multiple pathogens acerbated by urbanization and the unification of the Mediterranean world under Roman rule. Roman civilization could not forever escape its fate; there would be other pandemics, notably the Cyprianic one, and eventually the Justinianic plague. Harper’s Epilogue revealed a general purpose of his book: besides a detailed study of ancient pandemics, an emphasis on – via “inspiration in Malthus’ essential lesson” (p. 289) – the necessity to recognize “the opening act of a new drama, one that is still unfolding around us. A precociously global world, where the revenge of nature begins to make itself felt, despite persistent illusions of control…” (p. 293)¹²¹.

Harper’s bestseller was followed by a second monograph on diseases, “microorganisms and macrohistory” (to cite the rubric of the Introduction), in which the Antonine plague played a minor role¹²². Other scholars have continued on the same path, with the climate and various factors impacting on the climate playing a considerable role in Brandon McDonald’s book chapter from 2021 and in Colin Elliott’s monograph from 2024¹²³.

Conclusion: The Antonine Plague, consilience, and wigwam arguments

As noted in the initial section, there is today a great interest in the impact of ancient diseases both among scholars and the general public. “Health anxiety has risen greatly over the last few decades”, to quote a 2024 contribution in the New York Times¹²⁴. The scholarly field is moving forward at a rapid pace, and especially because of the progress within the natural sciences any participant in the discussion risks being overtaken by recent events even before having finished correcting the proofs of a text about to be published.

Research on smallpox in history is one example of such rapid change. It is interesting to compare the medical and scientific literature cited by Yan Zelener in his 2012 contribution on smallpox as the pathogen of the Antonine Plague – until recently considered decisive – with the bibliography in Rebecca Flemming’s study from 2019. Of the eleven articles, dating to the period 1998-2007, on which Zelener built his clinical argument, none is found in Flemming’s bibliography. She instead cites ten articles from the period 2010-2017. For anyone wishing to participate in that debate, or who even just aspires to reach an informed opinion, there is a reading list which continues to grow. At the moment, based on Flemming’s contribution, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the clinical nature of the pathogen which caused the Antonine Plague remains unidentified. Alternatively, it cannot have been the same highly lethal kind of smallpox that ravaged both the old and the new world during the early modern era¹²⁵. Here it is important to remember that identifying the Antonine “plague” is not an end in itself, but an important step towards estimating its impact.

The present study has attempted to stand on two feet, on the one hand providing a brief historical perspective and setting out from what seems most essential when it comes to the contribution from the so-called traditional sources, i.e. the literary, epigraphic, and, here to a lesser degree, the papyrological ones. It bears repeating that without our ancient narrative sources we would not be able to properly grasp the ancient pandemics we are discussing. Still, much of what we believe we can find in the ancient sources only serves as proxy data, either arguably showing the crushing impact of the plague, or, on the contrary, arguably showing the absence of a catastrophic impact.

To this material comes, on the other hand, ever more proxy data which is produced by scholars availing themselves of the methods of the natural sciences; not least archaeologists are often contributing in this context. Funerary remains lie squarely in their domain, but the absence of mass graves that can be dated to the quarter century after 165 CE, with the likely exception of the one from the catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter in Rome, means that one category of sources is largely absent from the discussion about the Antonine Plague, although such burials play an important role when evaluating the Justinianic one.

Instead, teams of scientists and some archaeologists which analyze the accumulation of lead pollution in ice cores from Greenland and other frozen northern regions have brought important new material to the discussion about the history of the late-Antonine period. But, as seen above, the interpretation of the data can be problematic and current scholarship on historical epi- and pandemics is facing a number of issues which are less than helpful. The demand for “sensational” news, and the temptation to provide some, was mentioned in section 9 above. A more serious concern is the way in which contributions are published in the sciences. Space is limited and editorial principles evidently do not allow for a proper presentation and critical discussion of the historical context and the implications of the new data. The situation is particularly harmful for historical investigations, since historians and humanists in general have a tendency to uncritically accept anything that is published in the “hard sciences”. Essential though the participation of historians must be in teams of scientists that undertake investigations of the past, there are situations in which the participation by historians plays nothing but a cosmetic role, which must be frustrating for everyone involved¹²⁶.

Choosing to work alone or to publish in venues other than science journals (thereby foregoing the particular authority that the latter often can lend to a contribution) removes the constraints mentioned in the previous paragraphs. However, by now it is clear that the many fields of study and the literature that a thorough contribution needs to master are daunting. Kyle Harper’s courageous single-authored The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease and the End of an Empire (2017) truly stands out in this context. Immense work lies behind also individual journal articles, such as Michael McCormick’s investigation of early medieval mass graves¹²⁷. One has the feeling that there always is more material one needs to consult in order to have the full picture. For example, I willingly acknowledge that I have not been able to engage with the discussion concerning bovine plague in history and cannot therefore evaluate the possibility that some kind of pathogen transmission might have taken place between cattle and humans during the Roman period; I refer to work by Timothy Newfield¹²⁸.

It is obvious that team work potentially has a number of advantages, and John Haldon and his collaborators in a recent contribution promoted the concept of “consilience” in the study of ancient epidemics. This means enhanced collaboration and interdisciplinarity; “not simply a question of a lead author familiar with aspects of other disciplines consulting with specialists…nor of putting together a multi-authored project…consilience requires active and intensive discussion to thrash out questions of methodology, scale, the use and abuse of results, and data from other subject areas”¹²⁹.

Not having recourse to an environment of this kind, here instead it seems best to return to the “wigwam argument” once launched by Keith Hopkins and then reintroduced in the discussion of the Antonine Plague by William Harris (section 3 above). To Harris in 2012 it seemed that, while lacking compelling proof, one could construe an argument for the “maximalist” view of the effects of the plague by combining a number of independently weaker arguments. To me it now seems that the situation is the opposite. Not only is the “wigwam pole” holding up smallpox as the pathogen (especially in its early-modern virulent form) now much shakier. Most of the other arguments advocating for a catastrophic effect of the plague have lost at least some of their potency, as seen above. The tent of the maximalists is sagging. Stronger poles instead strengthen the neighbouring wigwam, the one which is built up with the help of a number of arguments cautioning against uncritically accepting the “maximalist” viewpoint.

The conclusion of this contribution is not a minimalist one, but one of caution. If we take Gilliam’s estimate of one or two million lives lost to the Antonine Plague as a minimum, and Harris’ estimate from a decade ago of at least sixteen million deaths as a maximum, there is ample space for an intermediate position. Such a position also takes into consideration, when evaluating the actual effect on Roman society, the ability of societies to generate population growth after a disaster, as stressed by the demographer Massimo Livi Bacci and others, and various mechanisms for mitigating an ongoing disaster¹³⁰.