Plague - The Destroyer of Empires

[Nathan Ross]

What caused civilization (advancement in arts, education, society, culture) to reach a peak, then suddenly collapse, regressing for several hundred years and taking over a millenia to recover?

It didn't, though. Roman civilisation did not collapse in the Antonine era or the first few decades of the 3rd century, the Roman state did not change and the army did not disintegrate. There was huge mortality during the plagues in this period, which probably contributed to the later instability of the 'third century crisis' (which only began in AD235 with the murder of Alexander Severus), but by the end of the third century, central control had been reestablished and the empire entered a new period of strength and prosperity.

This is my main source:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/12530343/The-...man-Empire

https://searchinginhistory.blogspot.com/...-romana.ht

Your second linked article goes with a figure of 10% mortality for the plague.

The first thesis suggests that a figure of 25-30% is 'the general view today' - I don't think it is, as the previous figures I cited bear out. The author seems to have got his estimate from Duncan-Jones, and from Yan Zelener's 2003 thesis. (Note that the author also suggests that smallpox had been known in Europe before this time!)

I can't find a copy of Zelener's thesis online, but he seems to have modelled the impact of the plague quite thoroughly to arrive at a figure of 25% mortality. This 2014 thesis by Kenneth Philbrick discusses Zelener's work:

Epidemic Smallpox, Roman Demography and the Rapid Growth of Early Christianity

The author quotes (p.7) Littman & Littman's estimate of 7-10% rising to 13-15%, then (pp10-12) discusses Zelener's study. He cites the Center for Disease Control's figure of 30% mortality among those affected by smallpox, and mentions the wave-like cyclical nature of smallpox epidemics and the increasing immunisation of the population.

Philbrick (pp13-14) prefers to 'moderate' Zelener's estimate, bearing in mind the CDC's figure only concerns those affected, not the total population; he then uses the Littman's figure of 60-80% infection within a population and a 25% mortality rate for the infected to arrive at an estimate of 15-20% mortality for the total population, possibly rising to 18-24% if we accept the 30% infection-mortality figure given by the CDC.

I do suspect that even this figure is too high: the CDC estimates, I think, concern relatively confined population bases, whereas the Roman empire was a vast territory with varied communication routes. While the eastern provinces, military accumulations and large urban areas may have been heavily affected, the western provinces may not have been hit so hard - so we could see a sort of east-west 'fade' for the plague's effects.

In this case, dropping to a figure of 10-15%, with highs of up to 25%, seems plausible. These are still very high estimates, and would create a massive death toll.

However, we do have evidence to suggest that population levels recovered within 50 years of the initial outbreak, and coupled with the lack of disruption to the state or the army, we could see this as evidence of the strength and resilience of Roman society and civilisation at this point!