It is thought that smallpox may have been affecting human populations for 10,000 years. From about 3000 years ago -- on the mummified face of Pharaoh Ramses V of Egypt -- are spots believed to have been smallpox. Suspected cases have also been found in ancient China and India.
In 430 B.C., a plague hit Athens during the Peloponnesian War. It killed the great Athenian leader Pericles, among many others -- perhaps a third of the population. Although the disease has not been positively identified, there are arguments for its being smallpox.
In 180, Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome, succumbed to some sort of disease, which may have been smallpox, brought into Rome by soldiers returning from Seleucia. Many soldiers also died from it. In about 250, a plague started in Africa and spread to Rome where it raged twenty years later.
The next well-documented plague happened under the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, in the mid-sixth century. As usual, we don't know what the plague disease was.
