Source: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-harper-pandemics-rome-20171015-story.html
An interesting article from LA Times
The most devastating enemy the Romans ever faced was Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague and that has been the agent of three historic pandemics, including the medieval Black Death. The first pandemic interrupted a remarkable renaissance of Roman power under the energetic leadership of the emperor Justinian. In the course of three years, this disease snaked its way across the empire and carried off perhaps 30 million souls. The career of the disease in the capital is vividly described by contemporaries, who believed they were witnessing the apocalyptic “wine-press of God’s wrath,” in the form of the huge military towers filled with piles of purulent corpses. The Roman renaissance was stopped dead in its tracks; state failure and economic stagnation ensued, from which the Romans never recovered.
Recently the actual DNA of Yersinia pestis has been recovered from multiple victims of the Roman pandemic. And the lessons are profound.
In the first place, the biological agent of the great plague was a relatively young species. Y. pestis was not a germ that had existed for hundreds of thousands of years. To use our contemporary terminology, when it struck the Roman Empire it was an “emerging infectious disease.” As old germs evolve new molecular tools, or entirely new germs arrive on the scene, the results can be tremendously destabilizing — a reminder to modern societies that we must do more than keep track of known threats.
Second, the Roman pandemic was no parochial affair. The closest known relatives of the strain that caused the Roman outbreak have been found in western China. This fact is consistent with the detail provided by ancient sources that the pandemic erupted on the coast of Egypt, at an entrepôt of the bustling Red Sea trade. The deadly package was ferried into the empire across the vast Indian Ocean trade network that brought silk and spices to Roman shores. The plague was, then, an unintended side effect of incipient globalization.
An interesting article from LA Times
The most devastating enemy the Romans ever faced was Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague and that has been the agent of three historic pandemics, including the medieval Black Death. The first pandemic interrupted a remarkable renaissance of Roman power under the energetic leadership of the emperor Justinian. In the course of three years, this disease snaked its way across the empire and carried off perhaps 30 million souls. The career of the disease in the capital is vividly described by contemporaries, who believed they were witnessing the apocalyptic “wine-press of God’s wrath,” in the form of the huge military towers filled with piles of purulent corpses. The Roman renaissance was stopped dead in its tracks; state failure and economic stagnation ensued, from which the Romans never recovered.
Recently the actual DNA of Yersinia pestis has been recovered from multiple victims of the Roman pandemic. And the lessons are profound.
In the first place, the biological agent of the great plague was a relatively young species. Y. pestis was not a germ that had existed for hundreds of thousands of years. To use our contemporary terminology, when it struck the Roman Empire it was an “emerging infectious disease.” As old germs evolve new molecular tools, or entirely new germs arrive on the scene, the results can be tremendously destabilizing — a reminder to modern societies that we must do more than keep track of known threats.
Second, the Roman pandemic was no parochial affair. The closest known relatives of the strain that caused the Roman outbreak have been found in western China. This fact is consistent with the detail provided by ancient sources that the pandemic erupted on the coast of Egypt, at an entrepôt of the bustling Red Sea trade. The deadly package was ferried into the empire across the vast Indian Ocean trade network that brought silk and spices to Roman shores. The plague was, then, an unintended side effect of incipient globalization.
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