High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Plague of Cyprian is the name given to a pandemic, probably of smallpox, that afflicted the Roman Empire from AD 251 onwards. It was still raging in 270, when it claimed the life of emperor Claudius II Gothicus (ruled 268-70). The plague caused widespread manpower shortages in agriculture and the Roman army. It is named after St. Cyprian, an early Christian writer who witnessed and described the plague. In 251 to 266, at the height of the outbreak, 5,000 people a day were said to be dying in Rome. Cyprian's biographer, Pontius the deacon, wrote of the plague at Carthage: