Rust Again

In 700 BCE, when Rome was only a few farming villages along the Tiber River, the Roman farmers knew well of this rusting sickness that made their wheat useless for food or for seed. To stop this plague the priests of primitive Rome began to placate a new god. His name was Robigus, the god of rust. The ceremony that evolved to calm the anger of Robigus was held during the Spring Festival in the third week in April and included the sacrificing of a red dog, the pouring of red wine, and the following prayers:

Spare our crops, O Robigus.
Is it not enough that thou couldst harm them?
Accept, O mighty god our sacrifice.
Take it, O Robigus, and not our wheat!
Drink the red wine O god!
As we stand humble before thee

Spare us from the baleful glare of Sirius the dog star.
Still the blasting winds from the eastern sky.
Grant us our crops, the labors of our hands,
And we in holy gratitude
Will honor thee forever more.

Quoted from Famine in the Wind by G. L. Carefoot and E. R.Sprott

Did you catch it??? Still the blasting winds from the eastern sky.

In addition it must be remembered that the territory of the Roman Empire by 117 CE included all the land surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, north and south, including Egypt (see map below). And by 200 CE most of Rome’s food was being shipped from North Africa.

The soil of Africa has been given over by nature entirely to Ceres [goddess of agriculture and especially grains]; the oil and the vine have almost been refused; all the glory of the country is in its [wheat] harvest.

Pliny the Elder, a Roman scholar.

During the time of the Roman Empire, as in the time of the New Kingdom in Egypt, grain harvests in the Mediterranean were vulnerable to the whims of the region’s temperamental weather. These whims include winter floods that inundated newly-sown fields, scorching dust-laden winds that blew from the South (siroccos) that could cause the wheat kernels to shrivel before attaining maturity, clear skies too early in the spring that portended severe frost damage, and the east wind. As before, the east wind meant moisture. An east wind during the growing season meant wheat plants soaked with water, which enabled the spores of the wheat rust fungus to germinate and infect their hosts. Although many farmers knew there was some connection between wet weather and bad rust years, there was not much they could do about it except pray to Robigus.

Historical records and studies of growth rings of the old trees on both the African and European shores of the Mediterranean indicate that from 100-300 CE the climate was unusually wet. We can only conclude that the crops of the Roman Empire must have been ravaged by rust during the later part of the Empire. The three components for an epidemic were present, the plant (wheat), the pathogen (the rust fungus), and wet weather. The destruction of the food supply caused by rust probably contributed to the “Crisis of the Third Century”.

Like all other civilizations before and after, the economy of the Roman Empire, the defense of the Roman Empire, and therefore the survival of the Roman Empire were tied to agriculture. And if you are dependent on agriculture you are dependent on the weather - too dry and you lose your food source to drought - too wet and you lose it to flooding or disease.

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