Dresden 2011 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 22: Social Systems, Opinion and Group Dynamics II

SOE 22.2: Vortrag

Freitag, 18. März 2011, 11:30–11:45, GÖR 226

Disease Dynamics on the Road and Sea Network of the Roman Empire — •Daniel Löb and Michael Ditter — Institut für Festkörperphysik, TU Darmstadt

In the latter half of the second century A.D., a pandemic known as the Antonine Plague ravaged the Roman Empire. Although it is known that it claimed on the order of millions of lives and killed at least one emperor, its severeness and therefore its contribution to the decline of the Empire are still a subject of controversy among historians.

We propose a stochastic model of disease dynamics on the travel network of the Roman Empire to solve some of the open questions surrounding the plague that historiography alone cannot answer.

Our travel network was composed using data from Roman road maps (mostly Itinerarium Antonini) and the historiographic literature, so as to get an adequate representation of the most important land and sea routes. All results are benchmarked using the surviving literary and archaeological evidence.