The Antonine Plague of 165 to 180 AD, (Also known as
the Plague of Galen, after Galen, the physician who described it), was an
ancient pandemic brought to the Roman Empire by troops who were returning from
campaigns in the Near East.
Ancient sources agree that the
plague appeared first during the Roman siege of the Mesopotamian city Seleucia
in the winter of 165–166. Ammianus Marcellinus reported that the plague spread
to Gaul and to the legions along the Rhine. Eutropius stated that a large
proportion of the empire's population died from this outbreak.
According to the contemporary
Roman historian Cassius Dio, the disease broke out again nine years later in
189 AD and caused up to 2,000 deaths a day in Rome, one-quarter of those who
were affected.[6] The total death count has been estimated at 5–10 million and
the disease killed as much as one-third of the population in some areas and
devastated the Roman army.
Scholars have suspected it to
have been either smallpox or measles.
The historian William H. McNeill
said that the Antonine Plague and the later Plague of Cyprian (251–c. 270) were
outbreaks of two different diseases, one of smallpox and one of measles but not
necessarily in that order.
The plague may have claimed the
life of a Roman emperor, Lucius Verus, who died in 169 and was the co-regent of
Marcus Aurelius. The two emperors had risen to the throne by virtue of being
adopted by the previous emperor, Antoninus Pius, and as a result, their family
name, Antoninus, has become associated with the pandemic.
