“The sun gave forth its light without brightness … Men were free neither from war nor pestilence,” a scholar wrote before the Plague of Justinian. A sediment core shows Italy grew drier & colder then, so climate change may have contributed to Rome’s decline. www.newscientist.com/article/2414...

Plagues that shook the Roman Empire linked to cold, dry periods

A study reconstructing the climate of Italy during the Roman Empire based on marine sediments shows that three pandemics coincided with cooler, drier conditions