The most devastating plague to ravage the Greek world was the Plague of Athens (428 BC), documented in detail by Thucydides, although there are more confusing descriptions of the Plague of Agrigento (406 BC) and Syracuse (396 BC) as well as of the Plague Julia (180 BC) and the mythical Plague of Aegina that Ovid mentions in his “Metamorphoses”. The Roman Empire was not spared the plague either. Marco Aurelio was the victim of the first epidemic and in Rome and they died in the 3rd century c.C. about 5,000 people a day for his cause. The great epidemics influenced history. Thus it is believed that Justinian’s failure to restore imperial unity in the Mediterranean was due in large part to the effect of the plague which alarmingly diminished his armies. Similarly, the Roman and Persian forces lost their resistance to the Muslim armies in 637.
