《The Antonine Plague, climate change and local violence in Roman Egypt》笔记

Elliott, Colin P. "The Antonine Plague, climate change and local violence in Roman Egypt." Past & Present 231.1 (2016): 3-31.

-New climatological evidence has led to a handful of scholars offering softened perspectives on the damage that the Antonine plague may have caused; however, Egypt has largely remained an **exception** to this revisionism.

-My narrative is also a ‘wigwam’ argument, but it shows that pride of place should now be given to **climate change**, not plague, when it comes to a second century AD crisis. There is evidence to suggest that short-term variations in temperature, sunlight, precipitation and flood levels in the mid second century — especially when combined with several other factors — may have been severe enough not only to ruin the prospects for pastoralists and farmers operating on the margins of the Mendesian nome’s agricultural economy (and the agrarian regions of Egypt broadly), but also simultaneously to create new economic opportunities for agricultural operations which were better insulated against ecological changes.

-If a plague killed some 20 or 30 per cent of the population, one might expect to find more **direct evidence** than a report that some in an East Nile village died of ‘plague’, hearsay in a personal letter from the third century and the plagiarism of Calpurnianus. (P. Thmouis 1/ P. Oxy. 14.1666./ Lucian, Quomodo historia conscribenda sit, 15.) While it is true that there is also a near-absence of direct papyrological evidence for the sixthcentury Justinianic plague, the corroborative evidence — including detailed accounts in literary sources and DNA evidence which confirms the presence of Yersinia pestis (bubonic plague) — offers a more robust case for a devastating plague in much of the Eastern Mediterranean, a fact which gains additional significance because second-century AD evidence from all sources (literary, epigraphic, papyrological, etc.) is in much higher numbers and covers a wider geographic distribution compared with similar categories of evidence from the mid sixth century AD.

-Christer Bruun, who advocates a **‘low impact’ model**, articulates the prescriptive role that the literary sources have played in forming the narratives of modern scholars: ‘Senza Cassio Dione, Galeno, e alcuni altri scrittori, normalmente di data piu tarda, non penso che la ‘‘Peste Antonina’’ avrebbe potuto suscitare un interesse cosı grande’.

-When integrated with existing evidence, these data show that **short-term ecological variation** in the AD 150s and 160s may have encouraged changes in the agricultural economy of much of the province of Egypt, reduced economic stability for those who worked marginal land and, ultimately, created a shift in the distribution and productivity of agricultural land — particularly marginal, artificially irrigated land — in the region. These short-term adjustments in the ecological context of the agrarian regions of Egypt may explain the situation witnessed in Mendesian papyri from the mid 160s onward: losses in state revenue, a rise in banditry and the disappearance of adult males from official records.

-Two noteworthy items appear in these data. The first is obvious: there were sustained **eruptions** on a global scale between AD 150 and 160.

-The AD 150s and early 160s brought poor flooding, lower temperatures, less sunlight and possibly a drought. Under such potentially adverse climatological and environmental conditions, it would have been nearly impossible for many farmers, especially those who were living on the margins of the local economy, to sustain their **livelihood**.

-A reflection of the insecurity in Egyptian farming is seen in evidence which shows significant changes in both the size of leases and their duration appearing in the late 160s through to the late 170s. On the whole, in this period land was leased in smaller partitions and for longer periods of time — a situation which others have suggested was due to a manpower shortage in the face of high disease mortality. However, this may also simply be hedging behaviour. It seems indisputable that owners adjusted their practices to account for short-term insecurity. Guarantees were required. Mid second-century AD farmers were replicating patterns seen in Egypt’s agrarian regions at other times: the risks associated with poor flooding could be reduced by leasing land in a variety of locations and planting a wide range of crops. Interestingly, however, such behaviour also protects against violence by ensuring that if crops are stolen or if field-workers are attacked by bandits, the total losses are minimized. Lessees would have also been less likely to plant in large, attractive plots which could serve the purposes of roving Boukoloi. In other words, the papyrological evidence shows that the strategies pursued among both the rich and the poor were those which were common among pre-industrial societies in the wake of droughts and scarcity: the poor **migrated**, and the rich **diversified their investments**.