The world is currently witness to the plague of COVID-19. The USA is under quarantine for the first time in my lifetime. People are looking for a scapegoat; was this virus created by scientists in a lab in Wuhan funded by billionaires, or is Donald Trump a tyrant for threatening to re-open parts of America? Most of us realize these plagues unfortunately frequently occur throughout history. Trajan Decius was also forced to deal with a plague during his reign as Roman Emperor. The Plague of Cyprian in 250-262 almost led to the fall of the Roman Empire. The fever was felt to be a filovirus similar to Ebola. Cyprian of Carthage described the symptoms as follows: "This trial, that now the bowels, relaxed into a constant flux, discharge the bodily strength; that a fire originated in the marrow ferments into wounds of the fauces; that the intestines are shaken with a continual vomiting; that the eyes are on fire with the injected blood; that in some cases the feet or some parts of the limbs are taken off by the contagion of diseased putrefaction; that from the weakness arising by the maiming and loss of the body, either the gait is enfeebled, or the hearing is obstructed, or the sight darkened;—is profitable as a proof of faith." The plague is said to have taken the lives of 5,000 Romans per day. It sounds similar to the stories from Bergamo and New York City in 2020, Trajan Decius is remembered as a conservative, opposed to the new religion of Christianity. Some reports indicated that Christianity was responsible for the outbreak of the plague. In times of crisis, we often look for places to assign blame. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the conviction of the faith of Christian leadership in the face of the plague is seen as a contributing factor to the spread of the Christian faith throughout the empire. We have yet to learn all we can about the plague of 2020. How did it arise? Is anybody responsible? I think one thing is certain - the world will be forever altered due to COVID-19. The related coin is a tetradrachm (AD 249- 251). Prieur 588. This coin has been posted on CoinTalk before, but I wanted to share my example. Stay safe.
I wonder how bad would a filovirus similar to the one responsible for Cyprian's Plague be with modern medicine and epidemic knowledge. As I recall, the last Ebola outbreak had a mortality of less than 50% while when I was reading in the 90s about Ebola and Marburg a 50% survival rate was rather optimistic with the Zair strain being as deadly as 90%.
You might be interested in these threads, each of which deal with the Cyprian plague in greater or lesser depth: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/a-coin-struck-while-the-dust-settled.347580/ https://www.cointalk.com/threads/apoll-salvtari.354625/ https://www.cointalk.com/threads/their-plagues-and-maybe-ours.355652/
That’s a very nice tet, @deadmancoins , love the toning. I have a righty and a lefty tet of Decius, both from Antioch. Trajan Decius, Tetradrachm (Billon, 25 mm, 11.84 g), 249-250. AYT K Γ MЄ KY TPAIANOC ΔЄKIOC CЄB Laureate, draped and cuirassed bust of Trajan Decius to right/ Rev.ΔHMAPX ЄΞOYCIAC / S C Eagle with spread wings standing right on palm, holding wreath in beak. RPC IX 1625. Prieur 523 Trajan Decius, tetradrachm, Radiate and cuirassed bust of Decius to left, with balteus/ Rev. Eagle with spread wings standing right on palm, holding wreath in beak. RPC IX 1628, Prieur 513.
Awesome posts. The third thread you linked had an interesting discussion on the debasement of the silver content after the plague. Although my personal perspective is that I don’t think COVID will cause enough deaths like the Cyprian plague did to cause such extreme economic catastrophe. More worrisome for the US Empire is how will we respond to less trade with China.
Well, according to my students, the SARS-CoV-2 virus was engineered by teachers so that they wouldn't have to go in to work.
Unfortunately most novel disease outbreaks we encounter are zoonotic in nature, that is they spread from animals to humans. I’m not entirely surprised by the emergence of SARS 2 Coronavirus, as conditions in those wet markets easily facilitate transmission of fluids and tissue between animals and humans. It sort of reminds me of the West African Ebola outbreak in the mid 2010’s that started with a child catching the virus from a bat and was made worse by the bushmeat markets. Viruses are not by definition alive as they cannot replicate on their own; the term I was taught was “Obligate intracular parasite”. Though they are RNA or DNA based, they do not have many of the repair systems that bacteria or human cells do and are thus more likely to mutate. Most mutations to a virus do nothing, some are harmful and limit or stop their virulence while others allow it to jump to a new host. This process is made easier by how close the virus’s host organism is related to the new host. Example: A Chimpanzee is closer related to a human being than a slug is, so it would in theoretically be much easier for a chimpanzee virus to jump to a human. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simian_immunodeficiency_virus
