Not really, it's just that before the rabies vaccine and before any sort of organizations to control animals, encountering roving animals with rabies was a real danger with no easy solution. You can still get rabies from nearly any animal, and I'm sure that people in the 3rd century and such got rabies too.
are packs of rabid dogs roaming the streets something about the 15th to 20th centuries that I should know about
Not really, it's just that before the rabies vaccine and before any sort of organizations to control animals, encountering roving animals with rabies was a real danger with no easy solution. You can still get rabies from nearly any animal, and I'm sure that people in the 3rd century and such got rabies too.