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Ammianus Marcellinus (quoted voice)

Appearances

The Ancients

Did Plague Destroy the Roman Empire?

36.932

In the time of the Emperor Decius in 251 AD, there broke out a dreadful plague, and excessive destruction of a hateful disease invaded every house, carrying off day by day with abrupt attack numberless people. All were shuddering, fleeing, shunning the contagion, impiously exposing their own friends. There lay about meanwhile over the whole city no longer bodies, but the carcasses of many.

The Ancients

Did Plague Destroy the Roman Empire?

366.999

So Ammianus later recounted, The soldiers searching the temple found a narrow hole, and when this was opened in the hope of finding something of value in it, from some deep gulf issued a pestilence, loaded with the force of incurable disease, which in time polluted the whole world from the borders of Persia to the Rhine and Gaul with contagion and death.