Epidemiological Modeling and Impact Evaluation of the Antonine Plague
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2019-09-29

Since the beginnings of the "3rd century crisis" discussions the infamous epidemic called Antonine or Galen plague has represented one of the featuring part within the whole process. During the crisis period various segments and regions of the Roman world experienced different forms of turmoil (social unrest and uprising, economic inflation, political instability etc.) and external incursions (warfare, barbarian raids). Present scientific knowledge encompasses considerable margins of estimated death toll cased by the epidemics. The main intention of the paper dwells is testing of possibilities of impact on the basis of emulative digital modeling and simulation. Simplified studied geographically explicit context of the cellular framework represents a workspace for spatio-temporal quantitative modelling. Model input data for such purpose include e.g. reconstructed distribution of population density, infrastructure, and clinical data. The vital part of simulation dynamics is defined through the epidemiology mathematics (a compartment model driven by differential equations). Coping with large array of input variables, which are known only up to the limited extent, has constrained establishment of testing scenarios for assessment of possible quantitative and spatial aspects of epidemic impact within the demographic context of the Roman Empire.

(Marek Vlach)