Pandemics Are Similar, Societies Are Not: Roman Egypt’s Reaction to the Antonine Plague
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In the last two decades, an increasing amount of papyrological findings have begun to shed more light on the demographic and economic consequences of the Antonine Plague in Roman Egypt. However, both results and conclusions on this subject remain quite controversial. This paper reinterprets the Antonine Plague’s effects on Roman Egypt within the larger fiscal crisis triggered by simultaneous military aggressions at the borders of the Empire. Adopting such a framework sheds light on emerging distorted incentives in land management, which apparently pushed imperial authorities and large landowners to adopt extra-economic measures to stem falling rents, at the expense of tenants, coloni, and workers. Roman Egypt’s reaction to the epidemic seems to have been quite different in comparison to did in Western Europe following Black Death many centuries later. Roman Egypt took the first step toward the serfdom system.
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