Image Source: Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)
With modern medicine, technology, and medical knowledge, the human species has progressed far enough that only heart disease, cancer, and old age remain the leading causes of death today. However, this was not the case in Ancient Rome and Greece, where people died from a multitude of different afflictions, ranging from childbirth and venereal diseases to Cholera and Malaria.
Much was left to be uncovered about these afflictions and the discipline of medical science, which resulted in a life expectancy of just 20 to 33 years in the ancient world.
1. Childbirth
Contrary to what movies set in Ancient Greece and Rome tend to depict, mighty gladiator battles were not the leading causes of death in the era. The truth is death often came for the unassuming women and children more. Childbirth was a dangerous endeavor in ancient times, given the poor sanitation, lack of hygiene, and medical knowledge.
Medical practices revolved around administering medicinal herbs and offering prayers to the Gods. These factors significantly affected the health and chances of survival for both the mother and the child.
Although little data is available from the era, researchers have drawn comparisons of the mortality rates in ancient Rome and Greece to 18th-century rural England and concluded that maternal mortality rates were around 2.5%. And even if a mother successfully gave birth to a baby, their survival was less than guaranteed.
Infant mortality rates in the ancient world were as high as 40%, even post-childbirth. Estimates show that 75% of the children born in Rome did not live past the age of 10. Cultural beliefs and practices from the era also meant that Greek and Roman families gave the men of the household a choice to accept or reject a child after birth.
A man in the family could determine their fate if a child was sickly, weak, or suffered from deformities. This ranged from being sent into slavery, adoption, or even being left out to die in the cold.
2. Plagues
Whenever the word “plague” is uttered, people are most likely to think of the “Black Death” pandemic that ravaged Europe in the mid-14th century, killing between 75 to 200 million people. Unfortunately, the Black Death pandemic seems to overshadow some of the other deadly plague outbreaks in history. Ancient Rome and Greece were no strangers to such outbreaks.
Periods of overcrowding and stress would often result in the spread of plagues that claimed many lives. For example, Athenian general and historian Thucydides wrote in great detail about a plague outbreak during the Peloponnesian War from 430–26 BCE. Athens was packed to the brim with refugees, and tens of thousands of people, including a prominent statesman, Pericles, succumbed to the deadly plague.
And this wasn’t the only deadly outbreak either. During the reign of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161 to 180 AD), one of Rome’s first known pandemics, called the Antoinine Plague (also called the Plague of Galen), ravaged the city.
Believed to have been transmitted through soldiers returning from far-off military outposts, the plague was most likely caused by smallpox or measles. Estimates claim that it killed nearly one-third of the population in the regions of Rome, Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, and Italy and came as a devastating blow to the strength of the Roman army. In fact, this outbreak is believed to have claimed the life of Emperor Marcus Aurelius himself. This wasn’t the only recorded pandemic, though.
Historians also believe that in the 6th century, a form of the fatal bubonic plague killed as much as half of the population of Rome, perhaps a precursor to the Black Death pandemic of the 14th century.
3. Cholera
The bacterial disease known as Cholera was responsible for claiming many lives in the ancient communities. Given the size, population density, and social setup of Ancient Rome, it became an optimal breeding ground for infectious diseases like Cholera. Although usually contracted through spoilt food or drinking water, ancient Rome had many other culprits for the spread of the disease.
The lower class lacked a supply of fresh water. Moreover, public toilets, which were basically a series of rooms with several long benches with holes cut into them, were adjacent to shared public baths. Unsurprisingly, they were filthy, not properly maintained, and needed proper dividers or disposable cleaning material like toilet paper of some sort.
Instead, the people who used these toilets also employed a very public and shared cleaning tool called a xylospongium. A xylospongium was basically a sponge on a stick used to clean and wipe feces. They then washed it in a water, salt, and vinegar solution before using it again.
This facilitated the spread of bacteria-borne diseases like Cholera. Run-off and spillovers from these public toilets could also contaminate the water used in public baths, further accelerating the spread of bacterial illnesses.
4. Warfare, Crime, And Violence
Human history is plagued with warfare, violence, and an age-old desire to expand and conquer. The last major war in recent times was the Second World War, where millions of people died either on the battlefield or as collateral damage.
Although no global conflict of that scale has occurred since, the recent war between Ukraine and Russia is just another example of how achieving total world peace may never be fully possible. The Ancient Times were no strangers to such conflicts. If anything, war and violence were much more common back then than they are now.
Historians of the time recorded in great detail the casualties and loss of life that resulted from various wars and battles in ancient Rome. The writings of Livy and Appian recorded the deaths of nearly 100,000 soldiers between 201 and 151 BCE.
In a previous article about how far Ancient Rome spread, we covered the Punic Wars fought between Rome and Carthage to expand their empires. The Battle of Cannae against Carthaginian General Hannibal, which took place in the Second Punic War, alone claimed the lives of nearly 70,000 Roman soldiers.
The Third Punic War saw the Romans laying siege to Carthage and finally ending the Punic wars in 146 BCE, but only after they had claimed thousands of lives. Considering how ancient Rome existed for nearly 1,200 years between 756 BC and 476 AD, many wars were fought for territorial expansion and dominance throughout the years, no doubt resulting in a great deal of violence and death.
In the land of ancient Greece, the sight of war wasn’t as common as it was in Rome, but it was a scene to behold whenever it reared its ugly head. Civil wars between city-states like Athens and Sparta (the Peloponnesian War) significantly affected the male mortality rates of the period. Invasions from foreign forces like the Persian Empire brought similar trouble to the land.
Besides war, there was no shortage of other avenues for violence and bloodshed in ancient Rome and Greece. Violent displays like gladiator fights and battles with fierce animals were often a source of entertainment for the rich and wealthy. An infamous venue for these activities in ancient Rome was the Coliseum.
Communities were often socially divided by race, religion, class systems, and color, which led to frequent violent encounters. From robbery and street crime to alcoholic rage and sexual assault, many ancient people fell victim to such crimes.
5. Malaria
Historical evidence suggests that Malaria may have been one of the most vicious killers of the ancient past, especially during the long hot summers of Rome. In fact, forget the ancient world for a second; even today, Malaria remains one of the most deadly diseases we know.
Statistics show that in 2021 alone, 247 million malaria cases were reported globally, which led to nearly 619,000 deaths. Now imagine the havoc it would wreak on an ancient community.
Unfortunately, the ancient Romans could not connect the dots between static water sources, mosquitoes, and the debilitating disease. Swamps and marshes surrounded the city, and no efforts were made to drain them. This resulted in several malaria epidemics in ancient Rome that killed a great deal of the population.
6. Cancer
One of the deadliest diseases that the Ancient Romans and Greeks suffered from is one that we still struggle to hack even today: cancer. The name of the disease itself even originated from the work of the Greek physician Hippocrates, when he described ulcers and non-ulcer-forming lesions using the terms carcinos and carcinoma.
These Greek terms are used to refer to crabs, which Hippocrates thought cancerous tumors looked similar to due to the extensions from the tumors looking like crabs’ legs. Later, the Roman physician Celsus translated these terms to “cancer,” the Latin word for “crab.”
Cancer was just as devastating and dangerous back then as it is now. Today, treatments like chemotherapy use potent chemicals to eliminate rapidly growing cancerous cells in your body so that the cancer does not thrive. Even then, the treatment could fail, especially if the cancer is detected at a later stage. Now imagine a world without a possible therapy for a vicious disease like cancer, and that’s precisely what ancient times were like.