Classical and Early Medieval Epidemics as a Marker of Transformation of Sociocultural Space and Historical Narrative

Relevance of the research topic stems from the need for a critical reassessment of historical and medical space as an instrument of sociopolitical transformation and the legitimization of narratives about the past. Each large-scale pandemic and epidemiological catastrophe not only alters demographic and administrative boundaries but also brutally transforms the discourse of the time, turning the description of a disease into a marker of ideological and political confrontation between invaders and the conquered. The lived experience of pandemics and intellectual alienation within the ancient world cannot be reduced to a mere registration of biological losses, as it encompasses deep processes of space de-identification, the ideological subjugation of time, and the artificial construction of historical myths, which require a thorough critical and decolonial analysis.

Problem statement. This study focuses on how classical and early medieval authors employ the technology of the ‘historical seam’, narrative silencing, and the creation of discursive ghettos to objectify the scale of destruction and deprive certain social groups or institutions of agency. The author invites the reader to reflect on the nature of the ancient text as an ideological script of the victors, the ethics of appropriating and interpreting someone else’s past, and the role of contemporary source inventorying as the only effective mechanism for restoring historical justice regarding the assessment of the scale of ancient pandemics.

Analysis of recent research and publications. The theoretical foundation of the study is based on the intersection of several academic disciplines: classical philology, memory studies, critical historiography, and contemporary historical epidemiology. The theoretical basis for understanding the mechanisms of narrative marking, restitution of primary sources, and reorientation of perceptions of epidemics under conditions of crises is provided by the works of Titus Lucretius Carus, Thucydides, Procopius of Caesarea, as well as contemporary researchers J. Longrigg, L. Mordechai, M. Eisenberg, and A. J. Woodman; in particular, the concepts of the ‘infrastructure of extraction’ and ‘historical continuum’ are key to describing the practices of classical heritage appropriation and reinterpretation.

Research task. The aim of this article is to explore the ideological and instrumental foundations of ancient historiographical and medical practices as a marker of the legitimization of certain sociopolitical narratives, and to identify universal mechanisms for the intellectual appropriation of someone else’s past and the de-identification of the conquered space during global crises (on the example of the Plague of Athens and the Justinianic Plague).

Main material presentation. The experience of analyzing narrative pressure within the field of classical historiography demonstrates that textual analysis of pandemics for a chronicler is not merely a chronicle of diseases, but a framework for producing new socio-political meanings. The article analyzes the multi-layered process of transforming the crisis landscape using the “historical seam” technique, which converts a biological catastrophe into a logical stage for legitimizing or discrediting political regimes. It reveals the essence of the “infrastructure of extraction”, where the narrative catalog of symptoms and the rhetorical strategies of classical historiography become tools for the intellectual subjugation of time and the construction of an ideological script. The study identifies the features of modern revisionist surgery of ancient memory, based on the ideological segregation of sources and the forced deconstruction of the scale of pandemics. A comparison of classical models with latest research highlights a brutal scheme for the de-identification of the catastrophic narrative: the critical rejection of “maximalist” pandemic models through the use of quantitative methods, paleogenetics, and papyrology; the identification of mobile multimedia surrogates in source interpretation; and the artificial blurring of the agency of the disease-subjugated society within the traditional historical concept of “total collapse”.

Conclusions. Thus, the representation of epidemiological catastrophes and each individual pandemic in the hands of a biased chronicler or researcher is a complex, multidimensional process of institutional violence in which geopolitical, ideological, and propagandistic dimensions of historical reformatting are combined, where an artificial textual script serves as a temporary decoration to justify or condemn state transformations. The genuine overcoming of the consequences of source distortion and the decolonization of memory about antiquity prove to be inextricably linked with the physical de-occupation of intellectual space from myths, the restitution of authentic meanings of primary sources, and the restoration of sovereign critical control over the methodology of historical and medical discourse.