25 minutes on… Plagues: Lecture Four - 'The Plague of Cyprian and the Crisis of the Roman Empire'

Andrew Wilson is Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire and a Fellow of All Souls College. He studies the technology and economy of the Roman Empire – how supply systems and trade networks sustained populations and underpinned, or failed to underpin, imperial prosperity. He has also worked extensively on the impact of infectious disease on the classical world, and has directed excavation projects in North Africa, Italy, and Türkiye. 

Among the many problems that affected the Roman Empire in the third century AD — wars, revolts, invasions, earthquakes, and famine — was a disease known as ‘the Plague of Cyprian’ after St Cyprian of Carthage who describes it in his letters. This talk explores how archaeology can illuminate the effects of this pandemic, by looking at mass burials, shrinkage of cities, abandonment of rural settlements, and disruption to various forms of production. It argues that the plague of Cyprian provoked a systemic transformation of the empire and underlies the greater inequality characteristic of the late empire: hereditary professions, tied peasantry, and vast estates.