The 412 BC epidemic of an unknown disease, often identified as influenza,[1][2][3] was reported in Northern Greece by Hippocrates[4] and in Rome by Livy.[5] Both described the epidemic continuing for roughly a year.[citation needed]
The disease outbreak caused a food shortage in the Roman Republic, and a famine was only prevented with food relief from Sicily and Etruria, and via trade missions to the "peoples round about who dwelt on the Tuscan sea or by the Tiber."[6]
Hippocrates named a wide variety of symptoms, among them: fever, coughing, pain in head and neck, and emaciation. The disease proved fatal most often among prepubescent children.[4]
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