Disease and death in the ancient city of Rome

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by Walter Scheidel
published on 14 October 2011

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This paper surveys textual and physical evidence of disease and mortality in the city of Rome in the late republican and imperial periods. It emphasizes the significance of seasonal mortality data and the weaknesses of age at death records and paleodemographic analysis, considers the complex role of environmental features and public infrastructure, and highlights the very considerable promise of scientific study of skeletal evidence of stress and disease

Editorial Review This article has been reviewed for accuracy, reliability and adherence to academic standards prior to publication.

Written by Walter Scheidel, linked by Jan van der Crabben, published 14 October 2011. Source URL: http://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/scheidel/040901.pdf.

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Cite This Work

APA Style

Scheidel, W. (2011, October 14). Disease and death in the ancient city of Rome. Ancient History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.ancient.eu/article/257/

Chicago Style

Scheidel, Walter. "Disease and death in the ancient city of Rome." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Last modified October 14, 2011. https://www.ancient.eu/article/257/.

MLA Style

Scheidel, Walter. "Disease and death in the ancient city of Rome." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia, 14 Oct 2011. Web. 22 Oct 2020.

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Original article by Walter Scheidel. Submitted by Jan van der Crabben, published on 14 October 2011 under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.

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