When natural disasters like the Haiti earthquake struck in the ancient world, the first move was to appeal to the Roman emperor. Smyrna, on the west coast of modern Turkey, was hit with a massive quake in ad 177/8. The letter to the emperor Marcus Aurelius from the local bigwig Aelius Aristides describes ‘dust everywhere, the harbour closed, the magnificent market flattened, fine roads disappeared, sports grounds, men, boys and all, destroyed, ships lying flat or sunk, bodies and ruins piled up, winds blowing over what is now a desert.
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