The popular notion that hordes of "barbarians" were the greatest single cause of the fall of the mighty Roman Empire in 476 AD might not be that accurate.

The Germanic and non-Germanic tribes that obliterated the empire might have been "helped" by an unseen army of allies called the "Plague of Cyprian." The plague is believed to have killed 5,000 people in Rome every day, severely weakening the Roman Empire and the legions protecting it against barbarians.

Like Us on Facebook

"It killed two Emperors, Hostilian in A.D. 251 and Claudius II Gothicus in A.D. 270," said Francesco Tiradritti, director of the Italian Archaeological Mission to Luxor (MAIL).

It is "a generally held opinion that the 'Plague of Cyprian' seriously weakened the Roman Empire, hastening its fall," he said.

Archaeologists believe the Plague of Cyprian was a pandemic, probably of smallpox, that afflicted the Roman Empire from 250 AD to 271 AD. It was still raging in 270 AD when it claimed the life of emperor Claudius II Gothicus. The plague caused widespread manpower shortages in the Roman army.

Archaeologists said the Plague of Cyprian savaged peoples in the Roman Empire, which included Egypt, the epicenter of the pandemic. Saint Cyprian, a bishop of Carthage (a city in Tunisia), described the plague as heralding the end of the world.

MAIL archaeologists working at the Funerary Complex of Harwa and Akhimenru in the west bank of the ancient city of Thebes (modern-day Luxor) in Egypt have found remains of people they believe were victims of the plague.

Tiradritti's team uncovered the remains of a body-disposal operation for the disposal of infected corpses between 1997 and 2012. Pottery remains found in the kilns allowed researchers to date the body disposal operation to the third century A.D., a time when the Plague of Cyprian weakened the Roman Empire.

Describing the plague, Cyprian wrote in Latin in a work called "De mortalitate:" "The bowels, relaxed into a constant flux, discharge the bodily strength [and] a fire originated in the marrow ferments into wounds of the fauces (an area of the mouth)."

"The "intestines are shaken with a continual vomiting, [and] the eyes are on fire with the injected blood," he wrote, adding that "in some cases the feet or some parts of the limbs are taken off by the contagion of diseased putrefaction."

"The kingdom of God, beloved brethren, is beginning to be at hand; the reward of life, and the rejoicing of eternal salvation, and the perpetual gladness and possession lately lost of paradise, are now coming, with the passing away of the world." 

Tagsancient, plague, destroy, Roman Empire, history