Informace o publikaci
The Plague of Cyprian in Rome and Achaea : Designing a Comparative Model of Different Pathogens
| Autoři | |
|---|---|
| Rok publikování | 2021 |
| Druh | Další prezentace na konferencích |
| Fakulta / Pracoviště MU | |
| Citace | |
| Popis | Several authors (McNeill 1976; Stark 1996) have argued that the Antonine Plague and the Plague of Cyprian had a significant impact on the composition of the population of the Roman Empire during the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. The impact of those pandemics is deemed so significant that it might have led to the ideal conditions under which Christianity became a dominant force in the Roman Empire during the 4th century CE. The magnitude of this phenomenon was nevertheless questioned by other scholars (e.g. Gilliam 1961 or Bagnall 2002). One of the research directions that might allow to advance the discussions surrounding the traditional narrative of “Christian triumphalism” is to inspect the currently available sources by novel methods and assess whether such an interpretation is realistic at all. Recent adoption of the methods of mathematical and computational modelling by the humanities allows to precisely demonstrate some phenomena related to the Antonine Plague and the Plague of Cyprian. Focusing on the Plague of Cyprian (ca. 249–270 CE), however, no molecular evidence of its causative agent is available. This makes it difficult to estimate the impact of the Cyprianic Plague on the population of the Roman Empire, let alone its Christian sub-population. Fortunately, the literary evidence (primarily the writings of Cyprian and Historia Augusta: Gall. 5.5 analysed e.g. in Harper 2016) indicates features of the disease and the extent of its impact on Roman society. The aim of this paper is to propose a way how to create a compartmental model of the Cyprianic Plague in the city of Rome and the cities of the Achaean region between 249 and 262 CE, and compare its output with historical evidence to identify the most plausible cause of this disease outbreak. |
| Související projekty: |