Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire / Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 91, 2013, p. 45– 68 When the waters recede: the economic impact of tsunamis in the Graeco-Roman world (1)

Most people remember the Indian Ocean tsunami (December 26th, 2004) which killed over 230,000 people and, more recently, the earthquake and tsunami which hit the Pacific coast of Japan (March, 11th 2011) killing over 25,000 people. In both cases profound devastation was also caused. As has been often observed, the economic effects of such catastrophes on the remaining survivors, at least for the short-term, seem to have been less damaging than what one might expect. For instance, according to some preliminary analysis, ‘ in the case of the recent earthquake/ tsunami in Sendai, recent data do not suggest that in terms of the initial mortality and destruction it caused even such a catastrophic natural disaster will have any significant adverse impact on the national economy of a rich country like Japan’ (4). That said, the aim of this paper is to focus on the economic consequences, if any, of the tidal waves on certain regions and periods of the classical world. Most interesting is the tsunami that hit Alexandria and some other locations on the South-Eastern Mediterranean on July 21, AD 365. As a matter of fact, the study of natural disasters has been a popular topic for modern scholarship of Antiquity (5).

Along the Mediterranean basin, ancient tsunamis usually devastated regions with high levels of seismic activity, such as the Balkans, the South-East, the Levant or the central and eastern islands. Most of the archaeological evidence from tsunamis and earthquakes, however, has been mixed up by a