Ancient Rome, the tyrant of the gladiator and an urgent warning for our time

He was a son of privilege turned demagogue, a man who blurred the boundaries of politics and entertainment, and who seemed to believe himself to be a deity for whom the rules of death did not apply.. His convulsive tenure lasted longer than expected. Then came a plague that looked like a sordid reflection of the ruler’s arrogance and ineptitude. The disease exposed and amplified social tensions that had spread beneath the surface and led to rumors of civil war. The people couldn’t take it anymore and, finally, the cowards Senate gave demonstrations of courage full of hope.

After the villain’s disappearance, power was entrusted to a high-ranking senator whose respect for decency had become the most reassuring virtue. The state ship passed a helmsman with good hands.

I mean, of course, the Roman Emperor Comfortable and his successor Pertinax. Comfortable, son of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, reigned as sole emperor for twelve years (180-192 AD), and his reign was marred by a permanent scandal. The emperor had a disturbing contempt for traditional decorum. To the delight of some and the dismay of many, Commodus himself took part in gladiatorial shows. One can only imagine what he would have done if he had had Twitter.

It’s how, when a ruthless plague has reappeared with tremendous ferocity – At its peak it would have killed up to 2,000 Romans a day – tensions were mounting. To use the words of a contemporary senator, Comfortable it was a curse worse than any plague. The unseemly emperor was strangled in his bathroom by a fighter, Narcissus, who followed the orders of a group of conspirators.

Drawing parallels between us and the Romans is one of the favorite activities of history buffs, although it may seem a bit rude to professional historians to use our training to treat Rome as a mirror of our own time.. However, these parallels also have a serious side: the way we understand the past inevitably influences how we understand the present. What we can learn by reflecting on this chapter from the old Roma is that, more than an example to follow or a set of solutions tailored to our own crises, it is about a different sensitivity, an awareness of the powerful force that nature has been throughout life. history of humanity.

It is inevitable to bring our own anxieties and sensibilities to the study of the past. We are also integrating new tools and techniques that help us understand their meaning. The result is that even the most edited pages in history continue to tell us things we never expected. Today, we fear, and rightly so, that our ecological recklessness has repercussions and this makes us aware of the dimensions of history that we previously ignored or that we have left aside too quickly.

The scourge of Commodus’ tenure was part of a pandemic known as “on antonine“. It first appeared during the reign of the father of Comfortable, Marcus Aurelius. It was not the Plague, in the sense of bubonic plague, an undoubtedly terrible disease which appeared in the later stages of Roman history.

It is not known for sure which microbe caused the Antonina plague, although most experts believe the most likely culprit is an ancestor of the smallpox virus.. The Antonina plague is an example of a deeper lesson that is revealed in the study of human diseases: most of the most vicious microbes in human history aren’t very old. They were born and evolved on a human time scale, over the past millennia and centuries, and in response to the opportunities we have inadvertently presented to them. A second lesson is that human health and animal health are inseparable. Our relationship with the environment affects us, sometimes with a destructive force.

Smallpox virus is less than 2,000 years old. The Antonina plague may well represent an early stage in its evolution as a human pathogen. Like many viruses, the agent of smallpox belongs to a family whose different representatives infect small mammals, such as rodents. As human societies develop and become more and more interconnected, we come across animals and their diseases. Evolution is constantly experimenting with adaptations to new hosts, and some of these experiments are unfortunately successful.

The plague Antonina was such an experience. Even without understanding the microbiology of the disease, the Romans knew that the Antonine plague came from outside, that it was something new that had arisen with terrible fury. They believed the plague had broken out among their own soldiers campaigning beyond the Roman borders into what is now Iraq. The germ likely spread along the busy trade routes that connected most of the world. The old world. The Romans maintained an intense trade with East Africa, the Middle East, India Yes China. It turns out that the first documented direct contact between Roma Yes China it happened the same year that the Antonine plague broke out at the time of Marcus Aurelius. Although nothing compares to our world “planoThe Romans lived one of the most important phases in the long history of globalization. Then, as now, exposure to the disease was one of its unintended consequences.

The Antonina plague could have been one of the first “pandemicsHistory, if by this term we mean an explosive outbreak of diseases on an intercontinental scale. Living through a pandemic not only makes us see different layers of the past, but it can also make us listen to our ancient sources with more empathy. For example, COVID-19[femininea rendu la signification psychologique des chiffres de la mort quotidienne dans nos textes anciens – comme 2000 décès par jour en Roma au moment de la À l’aise– être beaucoup plus réel et vivant qu’avant. Les descriptions de cadavres jetés à la hâte dans les fosses, de morts privés de rituels sacrés si soigneusement observés en temps ordinaire, nous ont par le passé paru une hyperbole. Bien après la fin du COVID-19, ces traumatismes intimes risquent de durer: des êtres chers mourant dans une solitude angoissante, des rites respectables refusés ou reportés.

Le bilan final de la peste d’Antonine est inconnu et impossible à connaître, et des estimations respectables vont de 2 à 25% de la population. Je me suis aventuré à faire un calcul qui va de sept à dix millions de personnes, d’un empire composé de quelque 70 millions d’âmes. Cependant, L’un des paradoxes les plus difficiles à accepter est que la peste Antonine était autant un symptôme du succès de l’empire que de ses péchés ou tensions.. Roma a été frappé à son apogée de puissance et de prospérité, précisément parce que cette puissance et cette prospérité avaient rendu plus probable, d’un point de vue écologique, qu’un défi microbiologique de cette ampleur émergerait et se propagerait.

À la suite de la peste, l’arc de croissance de Roma il s’est terminé brusquement. Rome a perdu sa marge de domination militaire et ne l’a jamais complètement récupérée. Cependant, les Romains ont été résilients et nous aurons de la chance si notre pays perdure aussi longtemps que les Romains après cette affectation mortelle.

Rappelons le rôle de la nature dans l’histoire de Roma nous rappelle que nous sommes également fragiles d’un point de vue écologique et nous ne maîtrisons pas totalement le destin de notre société. La prise de conscience de notre fragilité ne doit pas nous rendre fatalistes. Au contraire, cela devrait nous inciter à être moins complaisants. Même avec tous les outils de la science biologique moderne, nous n’aurions pas pu prédire avec précision quand et où une nouvelle pandémie émergerait. Pourtant, nous avons été avertis et nous avons fait la sourde oreille à ces avertissements, en partie parce que nous racontons des histoires sur nous-mêmes qui impliquent que nous nous sommes libérés de la nature, que nous sommes immunisés contre les schémas du passé.

La fonction de l’histoire est humaniste. Leur objectif est de nous aider à voir ces schémas et à les prendre au sérieux car ils sont humains.. L’histoire est puissante parce que nous pouvons nous identifier aux espoirs, aux folies et aux peines de ceux qui nous ont précédés. En reconnaissant les limites de sa puissance face à la nature, nous pouvons aussi reconnaître la nôtre. C’est une leçon dont nous ferions bien de tenir compte. La peste d’Antonine n’était pas la dernière pandémie mortelle à laquelle les Romains ont été confrontés. Et la COVID-19[feminine ce ne sera pas le nôtre.

* Kyle Harper, professeur de lettres classiques et de lettres à l’Université de l’Oklahoma, est l’auteur de “Le sort de Rome: climat, maladie et la fin d’un empire” et du livre à paraître “Les plaies sur la terre: la maladie et le cours de L’histoire humain “.

(C) Le New York Times.-

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