The angel of death striking a door during the Plague of Rome.
The Antonine Plague of 165 to 180 AD, also known as the Red Death or the Plague of Galen (after Galen, the physician who described it), was an ancient pandemic brought to the Roman Empire by troops who were returning from campaigns in the Near East.
Description[]
According to Immanuel, God sent Merihem to unleash a plague upon the Romans so as to destroy anyone who was affiliated with the Illuminati, who infiltrated the empire and even believed to be the main players in the founding of Rome. In the aftermath, Azrael was sent to claim the lives of the Romans that perished.
Scholars have suspected it to have been either smallpox or measles. The plague may have claimed the life of a Roman emperor, Lucius Verus, who died in 169 and was the co-regent of Marcus Aurelius. The two emperors had risen to the throne by virtue of being adopted by the previous emperor, Antoninus Pius, and as a result, their family name, Antoninus, has become associated with the pandemic.
Overview[]
Ancient sources agree that the plague appeared first during the Roman siege of the Mesopotamian city Seleucia in the winter of 165–166. Ammianus Marcellinus reported that the plague spread to Gaul and to the legions along the Rhine. Eutropius stated that a large population died throughout the empire.
According to the contemporary Roman historian Cassius Dio, the disease broke out again nine years later in 189 AD and caused up to 2,000 deaths a day in Rome, one quarter of those who were affected. The total death count has been estimated at 5–10 million, and the disease killed as much as one third of the population in some areas and devastated the Roman army.