Considerazioni sulla "peste antonina" in Egitto alla luce delle testimonianze papirologiche

The aim of this paper is to provide some orientation and ideas on the papyrological documentation concerned with the Antonine plague in the later 160s. The evidence of papyri is controversial, but there are good reasons to assume that this epidemic did in fact cause a massive mortality and a significant demographic contraction in some regional contexts of Roman Egypt — the Fayum and the Mendesian nome. Nevertheless, papyrological data are a poor guide to actual demographic and economic changes, and we are not entitled to generalise the local impact of the plague. This survey of the evidence is no more than a critical sketch of economic implications and of possible scenarios of the phenomenon.