Plague epidemia 1500 years ago

[Simplex]

Hello,
when I just browsed through "Archaeonews.blogspot.com" I found a reference on an essay "Archeologica Viva" and a Link :
www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/CultureAndMedia/?id=1.0.2059849995.
The original Link for those who understand Italian :
www.archeologiaviva.it/index.php/article/1410/LA-TERRIBILE-PESTE-DI-GIUSTINIANO.html
Epidemical history is getting more and more interesting.
And while some scholars seem to endorse the thesis that the Roman Empire was brought down by epidemias rather than Barbarians, I still can't subscribe to this point of view but I still think , at least at my state of knowledge, that this part of history is still being underrated.
Do you have any suggestions "for further reading" ?
Thanks in advance
Simplex

[Eleatic Guest]

Do you have any suggestions "for further reading" ?

Absolutely. First starting point is 'Plagues and Peoples' by William H. McNeill. It also covers the Roman Empire.

[Celer]

Salve,

This is one of the most contentious areas of European history - what was the plague? Conventional wisdom says that it was the Bubonic Plague, a bacteria transmitted to humans by flea bites. This hypothesis came about in the late C19th when a French doctor was treating an outbreak of Bubonic Plague in Northern India - he noticed the swellings in the arm-pits and groin and casually remarked in a paper that they were similar to accounts of the Black Death. No-one thought to challenge this until recently.

Firstly, the Black Rat did not exist in Europe until the C17th. So no Bubonic Plague - it had to be something else.

The growing evidence is that the Black Death was a virus, transmitted through coughing and sneezing - basically you were highly infectious for 30 days without having many symptoms, then you died horrifically within 3 days from hemorrhaging. This would explain the shocking speed that the Plague spread, as within 2 years it has gone as far as Iceland, Russia and North Africa. The Bubonic Plague travels a few miles a year - very slow progress, and far too slow for the contemporary accounts.

The symptoms do not match up either. The Bubonic Plague is a localised infection of the lymph glands, but contemporary accounts of the Black Death describe vomiting black blood, skin peeling off like gloves, the skin going black (hence the 'Black Death') and dementia. This does not match the Bubonic Plague, but it does match a range of diseases called 'Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers' which are still with us today - Ebola, Marburg etc.

Anyone interested in this must read 'The Return of the Black Death' by Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan. I can only skim over the surface of some of their arguments, but as they are a historian and a scientist, they complement both areas of research perfectly.

Vale,

Celer.

[S SEVERUS]

Is there something in it about te plague in the time of Marcus Aurelius en after?

[Eleatic Guest]

Yes, but a more thorough treatment can be found in:

J. F. Gilliam: The Plague under Marcus Aurelius, The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 82, No. 3 (Jul., 1961), pp. 225-251