Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: NBN Book of the Day
Episode: Colin Elliott, "Pox Romana: The Plague That Shook the Roman World" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Description: In the middle of the second century AD, Rome was at its prosperous and powerful apex. The emperor Marcus Aurelius reigned over a vast territory that stretched from Britain to Egypt. The Roman-made peace, or Pax Romana, seemed to be permanent. Then, apparently out of nowhere, a sudden sickness struck the legions and laid waste to cities, including Rome itself. This fast-spreading disease, now known as the Antonine plague, may have been history’s first pandemic. Soon after its arrival, the Empire began its downward trajectory toward decline and fall. In Pox Romana: The Plague That Shook the Roman Wor...