Polite Dissent

The Exterminators #1 “Bug Brothers, chapter one”
Simon Oliver, writer
Tony Moore, penciler

The main character Henry is providing narration, and letting the reader know how a common household pest humbled the great Roman Empire. Unfortunately Henry has most of his facts wrong.

Henry’s Narration: Cultural imperialism right up till 164 A.D. when the Empire slipped up on a banana skin. Nature’s banana skin. The army had returned from conquering Iraq and unwittingly carried home black rats. Innocent enough, but those rats carried fleas and the fleas carried the most f****d-up bacteria, Yerainia pestis…the “Black Death”…and over the next 16 years 100 million people died.

There was a plague in Rome in the years 165-180 A.D. It is known as the Antonine Plague, the Plague of Marcus Aurelius, or Galen’s Plague. As Henry suggests, it was brought back from the Middle East by the Roman armies. However modern research as well as Galen’s contemporary account suggests that the disease was smallpox or possibly measles. It was not the bubonic plague that Henry implies and thus the rats and fleas had nothing to do with it.

Speaking of the bubonic plague –the most commonly accepted source of the Black Death — it is caused by Yersinia pestis, not Yerainia. Yerainia is not even a real word.

Finally, the 100 million deaths due to the Antonine Plague is way too high. Most researchers pin the number at around 5 million, though some go as high as 25 million. It was a devastating disease, killing up to 25% of the population in some areas, but not as severe as Henry believes. (Recall that the infamous Black Death of 1347-1350 “only”” killed about 34 million).

I’m willing to lay the blame for most of these errors on Henry and his incomplete understanding of the history and medicine involved. But not the “Yerainia” — that comes down to sloppy fact checking and editing.