HISTORY 135F

Infectious and Epidemic Disease in History

Department of History
University of California, Irvine
 Instructor:    Dr. Barbara J. Becker

Week 1.  Crowds

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).
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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?

 
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