Roman Disasters by Jerry Toner (review)

The publication of this timely, innovative and compelling book represents another example of refocusing in the historical profession. Before nation states became a category of analysis for historians, they viewed natural disasters as primary markers of chronological change. The professionalization of the discipline and the creation of numerous sub-fields pushed the centrality of natural disasters to the periphery. Jerry Toner’s excellent book continues efforts to bring disaster research into the mainstream of historical studies.

The book’s value lies in its mostly successful efforts to analyze Roman calamities and to contextualize and situate past events using recent comparative data. For example, in chapter one, the first of ten, “What is a Disaster,” Toner notes that Romans “suffered frequent, regular and sometimes colossal disasters” (5). By comparison, he provides statistics on the increasing and costly nature of disaster types around the world using the World Disasters Report of 2001.

As Toner noted in the introduction to chapter two, “This book is organized thematically to show how the Romans reacted to, thought about and used these disastrous events in their history” (17). In chapter three, “The Disaster Experience,” Roman reactions were complex, given the absence of the kind of varied and reliable informed sources available when a disaster strikes today. Then, rumors replaced information; accepted religious beliefs and their rejection overlaid causal discourse. Pro-social behavior, caring for the vulnerable co-existed with self-interest. Given the number of disasters faced by Roman society, earthquakes, floods, droughts, diseases and the ubiquity of wartime casualties in the many tens of thousands, Roman social and political structures remained intact, suggesting a resilience not necessarily found in societies facing modern calamities.

The way in which Romans thought about their most recent disasters is discussed in chapter four, “Dealing with the Aftermath.” Given the paucity of reliable sources and the absence of communication networks, disasters received no uniform or systematic response from Rome. Unlike some modern disasters, no “profound social transformations and cultural adaptations” (45) followed a disruptive and locally traumatic event. Emperors attended to some cataclysmic events and ignored others. “Self- help was a more reliable response than waiting for the Roman authorities to come to help.” (47).

Continuing the theme of how Romans thought about disasters, chapter five, “Thinking about Disasters,” explores the many different ideas about how they explained these events. Acts of god may have served as a sufficient explanation for the masses but for Roman elites, the teachings of Aristotle explained the physical causes of geological events, such as earthquakes and volcanoes. Seen in a religious context, disasters were both divine punishment for the masses and as “divine displeasure at Rome’s leader” (77). As a perceived harbinger of an apocalyptic end of time, disasters became useful strategy for enforcing a strict code of behavior and as a tool to blunt religious rivals.

In chapter six, “A Culture of Risk,” one of the volume’s more incisive contributions to the literature, Toner links modern disaster theory and research with the experience of Romans. Vulnerability and risk, two of the most important concepts in modern disaster research, are defined in Roman terms. According to Toner, social class standing but not necessarily gender or age represented an important variable, with the poor crowded into a city’s teeming slums of sunbaked timber where fire for cooking, baking, glass-making, metal-fashioning and more was ever-present. Poor or non-existent sanitation, food crises caused by flood and drought only added to their systematic exposure to danger, an exposure much more common in the ancient world than in the developing and developed modern world. As Toner points out, “Roman society placed certain people, often the ordinary people, in chronically dangerous circumstances,” (107) with sailors, those “marine gladiators,” (100) at risk the most.

In “Narratives of Disaster,” chapter seven, Toner undertakes the painstakingly difficult task of coding the frequency with which Roman narrators described these events. For example, narrators singled out damage to public buildings and property 42 percent of the time, while noting the number casualties...