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A ‘plague’ comes before the fall: lessons from Roman history

Just 50 years after the Roman Empire grew to its largest size, a mysterious and crippling pandemic known as the Antonine plague brought it to its knees. Research on climate change and in other areas is shedding light into how the plague, which preceded centuries of decline, emerged to pack such a devastating punch.

Although the plague did not on its own cut short Rome’s dominance, it struck an empire that was confronting multiple challenges beneath a veneer of prosperity and growth—factors that modern-day infectious disease experts might recognize as creating the ideal conditions for pandemics. Rome’s large legions might have sustained disease transmission for weeks, if not months, as armies passed back-and-forth through the same densely populated cities of Asia Minor and Italy that were taking on underfed refugees from the budding crisis. This proved fateful when, a few years later, many of them deserted and, now well-equipped and trained, turned on the cities of the Empire, pillaging and murdering in a crime wave that stretched from Asia Minor to western Europe.

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