Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 History, environment, population and cultural life
- 2 Health facilities in the cities of Roman North Africa
- 3 Greek, Roman and Christian views on the causes of infectious epidemic diseases
- 4 The knowledge and competence of physicians in the late Roman Empire
- 5 Vindicianus: Physician, Proconsul, Mentor
- 6 Theodorus Priscianus on drugs and therapies
- 7 More fifth-century Latinizers: Cassius Felix, Caelius Aurelianus and Muscio
- 8 Augustine and the medical scene in Roman North Africa in the late fourth and early fifth centuries
- 9 Reciprocal influences: Greco-Roman and Christian views of healing
- 10 The role of Roman North Africa in the preservation and transmission of medical knowledge
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- Index
3 - Greek, Roman and Christian views on the causes of infectious epidemic diseases
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 History, environment, population and cultural life
- 2 Health facilities in the cities of Roman North Africa
- 3 Greek, Roman and Christian views on the causes of infectious epidemic diseases
- 4 The knowledge and competence of physicians in the late Roman Empire
- 5 Vindicianus: Physician, Proconsul, Mentor
- 6 Theodorus Priscianus on drugs and therapies
- 7 More fifth-century Latinizers: Cassius Felix, Caelius Aurelianus and Muscio
- 8 Augustine and the medical scene in Roman North Africa in the late fourth and early fifth centuries
- 9 Reciprocal influences: Greco-Roman and Christian views of healing
- 10 The role of Roman North Africa in the preservation and transmission of medical knowledge
- Bibliography
- Index Locorum
- Index
Summary
In 251 CE a devastating epidemic struck the Roman Empire. A description of the situation in Carthage, capital of North Africa, one of the empire’s most prosperous provinces, has survived:
There broke out a dreadful plague, and excessive destruction of a hateful disease invaded every house of the trembling populace in succession, carrying off day by day with abrupt attack numberless people, everyone from his own house. All were shuddering, fleeing, shunning the contagion, impiously exposing their own friends, as if with the exclusion of the person who was sure to die of the plague, one could exclude death itself also. There lay about meanwhile, over the whole city, no longer bodies, but the carcasses of many, and, by contemplation of a lot which in their turn would be theirs, demanded the pity of the passers-by for themselves.
Some gory details of the symptoms of the disease are mentioned by Cyprian, bishop of Carthage at the time of the epidemic:
The bowels, relaxed into a constant flux, discharge the bodily strength […] a fire originates in the marrow, ferments into wounds of the fauces […] the intestines are shaken with a continual vomiting […] the eyes are on fire with the injected blood […] in some cases the feet or parts of the limbs are taken off by the contagion of the disease’s putrefaction.
It was said that the epidemic, which lasted about fifteen years, carried off 5000 people a day in Rome, and struck everybody, irrespective of age, gender, status (even the emperor Claudius Gothicus died) or nationality – so many of the Goths, against whom the Romans were waging war, died that the emperor did not even bother to continue the hostilities.
Under such circumstances it is understandable that the epidemic was seen as apocalyptic, as a sign of the passing away of the world. At times like this numerous questions would have beset the minds of the panic-stricken victims; the most insistent would have been what the cause of the disease was and where it came from. Horrific as the situation might have been, it was by far neither the first nor the last epidemic to ravage the Greco-Roman world. Although the severity of the disease and the resulting death toll might have differed, the question of the cause of the disease would recur.
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- Roman North AfricaEnvironment, Society and Medical Contribution, pp. 79 - 96Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019