Marcus Aurelius

The reign of Pius' successor, Marcus Aurelius (161-180 AD), was overshadowed by military campaigns and a pandemic known as the Antonine Plague. The pandemic, perhaps smallpox, haunted the Empire for a very long time from 165 AD. It even seems to have reached China. The impact was particularly great during cold winters.[1] From the words of the court physician Galenus and the Historia Augusta has been deduced that Marcus Aurelius and his co-ruler Lucius Verus brought the disease to Rome from their so-called Marcomannic wars along the Danube frontier. Here is what Galenus says:

On my arrival in Aquileia the plague attacked more destructively than ever before, so the emperors fled immediately to Rome with a small force of men. For the rest of us, survival became very difficult for a long time. Most, indeed, died, the effects of the plague being exacerbated by the fact that all this was occurring in the middle of winter. Lucius Verus himself departed this world on the way back to Rome, and Antoninus performed the ceremony of deification.

Galenus, De Libris Propriis 3.3. 168 AD. Translation Rebecca Flemming.

And the Historia Augusta has:

Speciale ipse bellum Marcomannicum, sed quantum nulla umquam memoria fuit, cum virtute tum etiam felicitate transegit, et eo quidem tempore quo pestilentia gravis multa milia et popularium et militum interemerat.	Marcus Aurelius himself singled out the Marcomannic war - a war which surpassed any in the memory of man - and waged it with both valour and success, and that at a time when a grievous pestilence had carried away thousands of civilians and soldiers.
Fuit eius fati ut in eas provincias per quas rediit Romam usque luem secum deferre videretur.	It was the fate of Lucius Verus to seem to bring a pestilence with him to whatever provinces he traversed on his return, and finally even to Rome.
Tanta autem pestilentia fuit ut vehiculis cadavera sint exportata sarracisque. Tunc autem Antonini leges sepeliendi sepulchrorumque asperrimas sanxerunt, quando quidem caverunt ne quis villae adfabricaretur sepulchrum, quod hodieque servatur. Et multa quidem milia pestilentia consumpsit multosque ex proceribus, quorum amplissimis Antoninus statuas conlocavit. Tantaque clementia fuit ut et sumptu publico vulgaria funera iuberet efferri.	And there was such a pestilence, besides, that the dead were removed in carts and waggons. About this time, also, the Emperors ratified certain very stringent laws on burial and tombs, in which they even forbade any one to build a tomb at his country-place, a law still in force. Thousands were carried off by the pestilence, including many nobles, for the most prominent of whom Marcus Aurelius erected statues. Such, too, was his kindliness of heart that he had funeral ceremonies performed for the lower classes even at the public expense.
Sexta die vocatis amicis et ridens res humanas, mortem autem contemnens ad amicos dixit, "Quid de me fletis et non magis de pestilentia et communi morte cogitatis?"	On the sixth day Marcus Aurelius summoned his friends, and with derision for all human affairs and scorn for death, said to them: "Why do you weep for me, instead of thinking about the pestilence and about death which is the common lot of us all?"
Historia Augusta, Marcus Aurelius 17,2; Lucius Verus 8,1; Marcus Aurelius 13,3-6; Marcus Aurelius 28,4. Translation David Magie.

The Historia Augusta mentions special laws of Marcus, and these seem to find a confirmation in the civil code:

Divus tamen Marcus rescripsit nullam poenam meruisse eos, qui corpus in itinere defuncti per vicos aut oppidum transvexerunt, quamvis talia fieri sine permissu eorum, quibus permittendi ius est, non debeant.	The Divine Marcus, however, stated in a rescript that those who transported bodies on the highways through villages or towns were not liable to any penalty, although this should not be done without the permission of those who have the right to grant it.
Digesta 47.12.3.4. Translation Samuel P. Scott.

A funeral depicted in the Gallo-Roman Museum in Tongeren, Belgium. Photo: Wikimedia, Ziko van Dijk.

The effects in the countryside and the cities are described by Aelius Aristides, a contemporary, in Smyrna (Izmir, Turkey), and, in the early fifth century, by Paulus Orosius:

I happened to be in the suburbs at the height of summer. A plague infected nearly all my neighbours. First two or three of my servants grew sick, then one after another. Then all were in bed, both the younger and the older. I was last to be attacked. Doctors came from the city and we used their attendants as servants. Even certain of the doctors who cared for me acted as servants. The livestock too became sick. And if anyone tried to move, he immediately lay dead before the door. Everything was filled with despair, and wailing, and groans, and every kind of difficulty. There was also terrible sickness in the city.

Aelius Aristides, Orations 48,38. Translation C.A. Behr.

Secuta est lues plurimis infusa provinciis, totamque Italiam pestilentia tanta vastavit, ut passim villae, agri atque oppida sine cultore atque habitatore deserta in ruinas silvasque concesserint.	A plague now spread over many provinces, and a great pestilence devastated all Italy. Everywhere country houses, fields, and towns were left without a tiller of the land or an inhabitant, and nothing remained but ruins and forests.
Paulus Orosius, History against the pagans 7,15,5. Translation I.W. Raymond - A.T. Fear.

With a population of perhaps 25.000, some 1000 people may normally have died in Ostia each year, 3 persons per day on average. The death toll must now have risen considerably, in waves, but in unknown years. We have no means of establishing the precise impact and dates, partly because of the absence of dated funerary inscriptions. It is true that construction activity was quite low during the reign of Marcus (the House of Hercules is one of the few buildings that have been assigned to his reign), but that was only to be expected after all the work under his predecessors.

The House of Hercules, one of the few buildings erected during the reign of Marcus Aurelius.
Photo: Parco Archeologico di Ostia Antica.

The plague, lues in Latin, returned several times. A funerary inscription from 182 AD found in Eggstätt, to the south-east of München, describes some victims as qui per luem vita functi sunt, "who lost their lives through the plague".[2] It broke out again in Rome in 189 AD. Commodus then took refuge in an Imperial villa to the south of Ostia:

Moreover, a pestilence occurred, the greatest of any of which I have knowledge; for two thousand persons often died in Rome in a single day. Then, too, many others, not alone in the City, but throughout almost the entire empire, perished at the hands of criminals who smeared some deadly drugs on tiny needles and for pay infected people with the poison by means of these instruments.

About this time, plague struck all Italy. The suffering was especially severe in Rome, since the city, which received people from all over the world, was overcrowded. The city suffered great loss of both men and animals. Then, on the advice of his physicians, Commodus left Rome for Laurentum. This region enjoyed the shade from extensive laurel groves (whence the area derives its name); it was cooler there and seemed to be a safe haven. The emperor is said to have counteracted the pollution in the air by the fragrant scent of the laurels and the refreshing shade of the trees.

Cassius Dio 72,14,3-4. Translation E. Carey.

Herodianus I,12. Translation E.E. Echols.

But with the reign of Commodus and his successors, the Severan Emperors, a new chapter in the history of Ostia begins.

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(1) See especially R.P. Duncan-Jones, "The impact of the Antonine plague", JRA 9 (1996), 108-136, and "The Antonine Plague Revisited", Arctos 52 (2018), 41-72.
(2) EDCS-14500869. There is one undated reference to a plague in a funerary inscription from Ostia: D(is) M(anibus) Atticillae praenomen Marciae pestis cui dira negavit, an awful plague denied life to Marcia Atticilla (EDR151200).