Supplementary readings for Week 1's lectures include excerpts
from:
-
The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
(460-400 BCE);
-
The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans by Plutarch
(460-400 BCE);
-
On Airs, Waters, and Places by Hippocrates
(460-377 BCE);
-
History of the Wars by Procopius
(c. 500-560 CE).
_______________________
The Greek historian, Thucydides, was both an observer and a surviving
victim of the deadly epidemic that struck Athens in 430 BCE. His
chilling eyewitness account brings to life the terror he and his fellow
Athenians experienced.
A half-millennium later, the Greek biographer Plutarch, retold the poignant
tale of the death of Pericles -- the plague of Athens' most famous victim.
In doing so, he put a human face on an event far-removed from the life
and times of his readers.
Thucydides lived at a time when Greek intellectuals -- theoreticians and
practitioners alike -- were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with supernatural
explanations of natural phenomena. The Hippocratic writings betray
this shift in thinking. The identity of the author(s) of these works
is shrouded in mystery. Whoever wrote On Airs, Waters, and Places
and Of the Epidemics viewed humans and the diseases that infect
them as fixtures in the natural world, entities subject to the rule of
natural law, not divine intervention.
A thousand years after the plague of Athens, another major epidemic
threatened -- in the words of the Byzantine historian, Procopius -- to annihilate
the "whole human race."
How does Procopius's first-hand account compare with those
of Thucydides and Plutarch?
How do these historic epidemics compare with those today? How
does the incidence of plague alter the social, political, economic, and
moral fabric of affected communities? How do individuals cope with
the added stress in their daily lives? What happens to accepted systems
of explanation and belief in the face of such challenges?
Who will write the tales of the plagues of our time? How might
readers five hundred or a thousand years from now respond to them? |
