The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c28.128

c28.128

It seems reasonable to believe that the decay of the Indo-Scythian monarchy must have been hastened by the terrible plague of A. D. 167, which started in Babylonia, and desolated the Roman and Parthian empires for several years. At Rome, as well as throughout Italy and the provinces, the greater part of the inhabitants, and nearly all the troops, sank under the disease. Niebuhr expressed the opinion that ‘the ancient world never recovered from the blow inflicted upon it by the plague which visited it in the reign of M. Aurelius’. It is not likely that India can have escaped.¹