ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines Late Antiquity from the point of view of the subsistence crises and epidemic diseases. Epidemics and famines have often been set in narratives as a pair since ancient times. Thucydides made a pun concerning the use of both words as contained in a Delphic oracle that stated that ‘a Dorian war shall arrive and an epidemic’. Epidemics and famines have often been set in narratives as a pair since ancient times. The deliberate spread of anthrax failed to develop into an epidemic, but fear of plague and/or smallpox was great. In August 2002 the state of Israel conducted a large-scale smallpox inoculation campaign, a disease which had been triumphantly declared eradicated by the World Health Organisation in 1979.