Pox Romana: The Plague That Shook the Roman World

Elliott, Colin. Pox Romana: The Plague That Shook the Roman World. 2024. 328p. ISBN 9780691219158. 

Rome has a long an dramatic history as a city that conquered the world and imposed its rule from Britain to Arabia, and from Germany to north Africa. The death of Julius Caesar destroyed what remained of the Roman Republic, and the civil wars that ensued ended when Augustus ascended the throne. For 150 years, rulers came and went, Romans fought each other, but the Roman Empire kept on expanding, imposing a set of common laws, measures, and, to some extent, a shared language. By the 170s, Rome was at its zenith.

But the timid peace imposed by Roman arms, known as Pax Romana, was shattered by the arrival of a strange disease that affected the young and the old, as most diseases do, but also healthy adults, especially soldiers. The Antonine plague, as this disease was known, spread like wild fire, much like the Black Plague would a millenium later, devastating entire cities and regions. Combined with a decade-long famine due to climatic conditions in Egypt, the equilibrium that maintained Rome at the top of the ancient Western world came tumbling down, and though the Roman world endured for another 300 years, the Empire was never able to regain its footing and glory.

Looking through historical evidence to determine what this disease could have been, the Antonine plague was most likely the world's first pandemic, affecting the globe from China to Britain and into Africa. Over the course of five or six years, the plague wound its way through the Roman world, destroying legions, savaging the economy, and exposing that the Roman foundation of prosperity and peace rested on quickly shifting sand. Examining reports from the era, and reconstructing the history of the times, Pox Romana convincingly argues that the first pandemic started the inexorable decline and fall of the Roman Empire, but that this process was hastened by conditions that existed prior to the arrival of the pandemic.

Fans of history and of the Roman Empire will appreciate the scope and breath of Pox Romana and will explore a time where, at the height of its power, the Empire was already collapsing from within.