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Plague of Cyprian

c. 249-262 CE·Social & demographic·Roman Empire (Mediterranean and Europe)·
c. 249-262 CEDate
Social & demographicCategory
11Empires active
Date
c. 249-262 CE
Category
Social & demographic
Region
Roman Empire (Mediterranean and Europe)
Era
Classical Antiquity
Significance

The Plague of Cyprian was a devastating pandemic that swept the Roman Empire from approximately 249 CE, reaching Rome by 251 and persisting in waves until around 262-270 CE.

It takes its name from Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, whose treatise De mortalitate (On Mortality) provides the principal eyewitness account, describing victims afflicted with violent fever, diarrhea, vomiting, deafness, blindness, and limb paralysis. Likely originating in Ethiopia or Egypt and spreading via Alexandria, the disease reportedly killed up to 5,000 people a day in Rome at its height and may have claimed Emperor Hostilian (251) and later Claudius II Gothicus (270). The resulting manpower shortages crippled the army and agriculture, deepening the political and economic turmoil of the Crisis of the Third Century. The Christian response of caring for the sick and burying the dead is often credited with strengthening the appeal and spread of Christianity across the empire, while the pathogen's precise identity, possibly a viral hemorrhagic fever, smallpox, or measles, remains debated.

See the world map in c. 249-262 CE →More social & demographicThe Classical Antiquity era

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