Free Republic

ROME — Long before the industrial revolution and fossil fuels, “climate change” was wreaking havoc on the health of ancient Romans, Smithsonian magazine contends. Citing a study published in the journal Science Advances, Smithsonian underscores a correlation between cold, dry periods in ancient Rome and “devastating bouts of fatal illness” between 200 BC and 600 AD. Whereas Rome enjoyed stable weather from 200 to 100 BC, it later suffered “three very cold periods,” all of which “line up with documented plagues,” states Smithsonian writer Sarah Kuta.

ROME — Long before the industrial revolution and fossil fuels, “climate change” was wreaking havoc on the health of ancient Romans, Smithsonian magazine contends. Citing a study published in the journal Science Advances, Smithsonian underscores a correlation between cold, dry periods in ancient Rome and “devastating bouts of fatal illness” between 200 BC and 600 AD. Whereas Rome enjoyed stable weather from 200 to 100 BC, it later suffered “three very cold periods,” all of which “line up with documented plagues,” states Smithsonian writer Sarah Kuta. The first cold spell, which struck the Roman Empire between 160 and 180 AD,...

The Plague of Cyprian, named after the man who by AD 248 found himself Bishop of Carthage, struck in a period of history when basic facts are sometimes known barely or not at all. Yet the one fact that virtually all of our sources do agree upon is that a great pestilence defined the age between AD 249 and AD 262. Inscriptions, papyri, archaeological remains, and textual sources collectively insist on the high stakes of the pandemic. In a recent study, I was able to count at least seven eyewitnesses, and a further six independent lines of transmission, whose testimony...