The Okmok Eruption and the Roman World with Joseph Manning

Yale History Podcast, Episode 5: The middle decades of the first century BCE include some of the best-known figures and events in the history of the ancient Mediterranean. It was an age of Roman civil wars and Egypt was drawn into the struggles. These conflicts resulted in the end of the Roman Republic and the Ptolemaic Kingdom. But how might we think about this era in new ways? In this episode, we talk to Professor Joseph Manning regarding what seems at first glance to be an unrelated event in 43 BCE: the eruption of the massive Okmok Volcano in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. As part of a team of researchers, Dr. Manning raises questions about the possible impacts of volcanic activity and disruptions in climate on the political and social upheavals of the years immediately after the assassination of Julius Caesar. While not claiming to definitively offer a new interpretation of Rome’s transition from the Republic to the Empire, their work calls for a reevaluation of this era in light of environmental factors. The resulting article, “Extreme climate after massive eruption of Alaska’s Okmok volcano in 43 BCE and effects on the late Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom,” was published in July of 2020 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. Professor Manning's participation in the Okmok study is the result of a long-term collaboration with Dr. Joseph McConnell, the lead author on the PNAS study (and a graduate of Yale College), and his team at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada. Joe is a pioneer in ice core geochemistry and high-resolution chronologies of volcanic eruptions derived from polar ice: https://www.dri.edu/directory/joe-mcconnell/ Joseph Manning is the William K. and Marilyn Milton Simpson Professor of Classics and History, Professor in the School of the Environment, and Senior Research Scholar in Law at Yale University. He is a specialist in the history of the Hellenistic world. His work has focused on Ptolemaic Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean, addressing