Accompanied by Professor Renaud Piarroux, head of department at Pitié Salpêtrière (AP-HP), specialist in infectious diseases, we delve into the history of epidemics, from prehistory to the end of Antiquity. Today, we tell you about the very first pandemic, the Antonine plague in the Roman Empire.
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The team: Charlotte Baris (presentation and writing), Léa Bertrand (editing) and Jules Krot (direction).
Credits: INA, HBO, Studiocanal, France 24, City of Science and Industry
Music and design: Emmanuel Herschon / Studio Torrent
Image credits: The Express
Logo: Anne-Laure Chapelain / Benjamin Chazal
How to listen to a podcast? follow the leader.
Charlotte Baris: The Black Death, the Spanish Flu, Cholera and even Covid. Epidemics have marked our history, often reduced to medieval representations. However, they allow us to understand the pandemics we can face today. Through five major historical periods of Antiquity, we take you to discover the birth of epidemics.
Normally, if I talk to you about the Roman Empire, you should quickly have an idea of what it looked like. And if you remember your history lessons, you know that we are completely changing scale here compared to the previous episode. Athens is now part of the Roman Empire. And so our story today begins in the capital, Rome.
I asked Renaud Piarroux, our epidemic specialist who conducted the research that guides us for this series, what were the particularities of this Empire around the 2nd century AD.
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