Kyle Harper got famous by The Fate of Rome, his disease-theory of that decline. This had attracted some critiques but his theory has been buttressed, by others. Kyle is back (, back again) and he's letting us read him for free. His new study is about dinoflagellates in Italy's southern seas, like the gulf of Taras. Stopping just short of Constans II and all that.
It returns to my attention as I am reminded, from last March, how warming also helped the Epigravettian, before all this. Global warming is pro-European.
This paper claims "Cyprian's Plague" as being well-documented. It was indeed documented... but only by the Christian saint Cyprian; hence the name, since actually this plague is a bit controversial, on account hardly anyone else noticed of whom Harper knew. Cyprian worked during AD 251-266. This span overlaps the hapless emperors Valerian and Gallienus. Rome almost died then; after Valerian's capture, co-ruler Gallienus inherited sole rule of not-much. He was I think murdered and his successors, all short-lived, had to reconquer the East from an Arab dynasty, to reannex the West from a Roman upstart, and to kick various northern barbarians back out. Anyway as a result of this political clusterfun, no Romans were much paying attention to what their own (increased) poor were dying of, except for the saints running hospice.
One sidecomment is that although filoviri and (more so) bacilli swarm in moist cool conditions; southern Italy was drier. No swamps or standing-pools, no mosquitoes - no malaria (among other blood ailments). So, bright side, if you had anything to eat down there, that was one slate of disease you didn't get anymore.
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