Two of the most impressive outcomes of Pox Romana, I must admit, are the existence of a Reddit page on the topic, with Colin Elliott acting as moderator and answering users’ questions—some of which are very interesting and thought-provoking and a dedicated podcast, The Pax Romana Podcast, with lots of stories from the 2nd and early 3rd CE Rome. Apart from this very much appreciated—at least by this reviewer—novelty in engaging people outside Academia with questions regarding the economy and ecology of the Roman Empire, the benefits of Pox Romana should be sought in the careful collection of examples, micro-histories, and sets of evidence that the author takes onto the scene while discussing some of the darkest pages of Roman history.
And yet, Elliott’s book is not the first—not even in the last few years—to deal with the role and impact of endogenous and exogenous phenomena (environmental, social, economic, etc.) that shook the Roman world. Following Kyle Harper’s The Fate of Rome, the author focuses on a narrower window of time and around a single specific event (the Antonine Plague, from the mid-2nd-century CE to circa 190 CE). This is not to pinpoint—with the risk of being tagged with an environmental deterministic perspective—the collapse of the Roman Empire to a single specific moment; on the contrary this precise choice serves to thoroughly discuss the global impact and the response of 2nd-century communities to that disruptive event.
In fact, the very structure of the book emphasizes how the Antonine Plague was a phenomenon that needs to be carefully analyzed in context, with a before, a during and, naturally, an after, all linked to causes and effects, and strongly intertwined between them.
In the first section, Elliott systematically presents how the Roman world, and its “fragile peace” (author’s words), the Pax Romana, were built upon a delicate and unstable equilibrium that eventually—and ironically—started to fail at the time of major political, economic, and cultural success of the Empire. Elliott rightly states that connectivity and mobility—in principle proxies for the success of the emperors’ decisions until the mid-2nd-century CE—were among the primary, if not the primary, causes of the environmental and economic decline. The digression that the author takes to highlight how hygiene conditions and health were both poorly maintained in Roman times is especially appropriate when it comes time to discuss the spread and contagion of plagues and epidemics in the ancient world. The author steers the reader’s attention towards Rome and other large cities, with their poor quality of life, to claim that the combination of massive urbanization programs and economic centralization towards urban centers also contributed to the spread of the pandemic.
Indeed, economic policies adopted by Rome and its world in the early centuries of the Empire had as major consequences a massive movement of people towards urban centers, the final destinations of agricultural commodities (e.g., the very abundant importations of grain from Egypt to Rome) as well as the stages for all kinds of businesses and economic transactions. This resulted in an unprecedented concentration of urban population, with close to one million people living in Rome, with all kinds of diseases (malaria, dysentery, etc.) being recurrent and with a life expectancy that not frequently exceeded 30 years.
The question about the pathogen that caused the Antonine plague seems to be both central and not exceedingly relevant to the author. Ancient authors who describe symptoms of those infected suggest to Elliott that we might be in presence of some sort of pox virus, although it is safer to say that we simply do not know. Unlike the Justinianic plague, the Antonine was not caused by Yersinia Pestis, and it was certainly not a modern “pox,” because Elliott demonstrates that this is only a 500-600 year old virus. It could be a now-extinct variant of the smallpox if, if Galen is to be believed that the effects were black pustular rashes on the skin of the infected patients, which turn into scars once dried.
Galen, the imperial physician of Marcus Aurelius, holds a primary position in the narrative of the pandemic as presented by Elliott. Galen’s account is of fundamental importance for ancient historians and, even assuming the bias of his stories, one that should be considered of the highest relevance for the understanding of the plague’s path in late 2nd century CE Mediterranean and beyond.
According to Elliott there was, however, not one epidemic, but at least two major outbreaks, covering—in total—the period that goes from 165 to 190 CE. The epidemic first appeared during the reign of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus in 165-166 CE, immediately after the triumphant return of Verus from the Parthian campaigns in Mesopotamia. Elliott highlights the role of population movements in creating the conditions for a pandemic. Indeed, most important were the movements of armies, to and from the East in 165 and 166, then north to meet a new German threat, in the Marcomannic Wars of the late 160s and 170s. But there were also smaller-scale flows of economic migrants from the countryside into cities, which may have accelerated the cycle of urban outbreaks of the epidemic by diluting the number of people with acquired immunity.
Roman armies, however, marched through the greater Mediterranean world before and after the Antonine plague and this reviewer agrees with the author when he states that “to prompt a pandemic in the …pre-industrialized world, an entire set of conditions had to align with exactitude” (p. 218). The search for the factors that triggered the pandemic and its outcomes is central to Pox Romana and the careful analysis of all the conditions that might have determined and alimented such a disruptive event is central to Elliott’s investigation. Climate change and food shortages were key factors in the spread of the pandemic. Evidence from Egypt (both archaeological and textual) is used by Elliott to discuss the climatic deterioration and the Nile floods in the 150s. These had a massive impact on the grain yields, thus causing food shortages and limited production in the grain basket of the Empire.
Demographic shrinkage is understandable, especially when looking at data from Egypt—carefully and systematically discussed by the author—but a lot is still missing that would securely establish a massive population reduction throughout the Empire in consequence of the Antonine Plague. Inscriptions from Asia Minor record peaks of funerary epitaphs in 165 and in the 180s, but we do not have enough evidence to connect this trend to larger and more distant areas.
War and the pay for veterans and soldiers are also proxies used by Elliott to assess the potential real impact of the plague. The visible drop in silver coinage in the years corresponding to the periods at which the pandemic hit the extended Mediterranean world is certainly a smoking gun, also considering that numbers seem to go back to average/normal production in the following years.
The Roman response to the plague was a double-edged sword. Repurposing boats originally intended to transport quarried material for the movement of grain from Egypt and elsewhere led to the abandonment of many extraction sites, with impactful consequence for the local economy and population, quite often in areas also hit by the pandemic.
Elliott’s analysis of how the people responded to the plague by invoking the Gods and creating new figures of worship (e.g., Glykon, the snake-god created by the Greek mystic Alexander of Abnoteichus) contributes to bring down to earth not just the otherwise complex Roman population, but also noble men and the emperor, including Marcus Aurelius himself, often praised as the best emperor of the entire history of Rome. Elliott also mentions the evidence of a rise in anti-Christian persecutions during the heyday of the plague. Although there is no direct correlation between the disruptive pandemic event and the persecutions, the author suggests that the pervasive fear and social tensions—particularly in low levels of population—might have fueled these mistreatments.
Unlike Harper, Elliott seems to stress less the incredible impact of the Antonine plague on the “Fate of Rome,” while tending not to consider that single event as heavily responsible for the downward curve of social, economic, and political distress of the late Roman world. It was however a catalyst for a series of changes that can be observed in the following years, past the end of the emergence around 190 CE. The death toll affected the demographics of the empire, with consequences for taxation and military recruitment and access to resources, which fostered an increased inequality in post-Antonine age. Military salaries, for example, increased after the pandemic, with Septimius Severus raising soldiers’ stipends consistently from the late 190s.
Eventually, it cannot be forgotten that the Pax Romana and the Pox Romana were two sides of the same coin. The years of the Antonine era were the direct consequences of a series of fortuitous and non-planned events: the de facto end of the Parthian Empire, the expansion in the East, the control over the numerous mines of Dacia, as well as generally favorable climatic conditions in the greater Mediterranean world. And yet, this was a fragile balance that ultimately dissolved in the circa 25-year long pandemic streak.
Elliott’s final observation is whether a pandemic event is truly a turning point in human history. Change and transformation did indeed occur after the Antonine Plague, but disasters and plagues (and equally wars), tend to generate rapid response, often associated with prompting socio-cultural adaptations. The Antonine plague was not the last pandemic of human history—as we all clearly know by now—but it once again proves that, exactly like COVID-19, these epidemics are very well established in our world, both the past and the future one, and endurance depends on adjustment and response.