Instead, we have to rely on the surviving sermons of Cyprian, the Bishop of Carthage, who gave his name to the pandemic. On the basis of his description of high fever, vomiting, diarrhea and sometimes bleeding from the ears, eyes, nose and mouth, Harper believes the epidemic was most likely caused by a viral hemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola. Even today, if patients are treated in modern medical facilities with the latest drugs, Ebola still kills half the people who contract it. Assuming this was the case, the Plague of Cyprian would have been a particularly gory and deadly pandemic—even by
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