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Epidemics in the Mediterranean: History of a Problem

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Epidemics in the Mediterranean: History of a Problem José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec. Full professor of Medieval History, Autonomous University of Barcelona When Lord Acton, editor of The Cambridge Modern History, recommended that his colleagues deal with a problem rather than a period, little did he imagine that in 2020 the spread of a pandemic related to Covid-19 would be sage advice for many of us. Since this virus arrived in our lives around January – it had appeared in China in mid-November 2019 –, I have spent time exploring in depth the entangled paths, very often written by witnesses shocked by the loss of lives, of epidemics in history, and I have drawn some conclusions related to the Mediterranean area that I wish to set out in this article. The text I offer here is a concise overview of as an expression of a society in existential crisis. the epidemics that spread through the Medi- Moreover, the account of plagues in Exodus is terranean world in the last three thousand an expression of the death throes of a people as years, since the arrival of the peoples of the a punishment from God faced with the proud sea, around 1177 BC. As Professor Eric H. Cline resistance of the pharaoh of Egypt. likes to say, I have conducted the study taking The description of the Athens “plague” – the long view of the effect of contagious dis- today we know it was not plague but typhus – is, eases over the course of the events. The limited theoretically, the history of a people submitted interest until recent times in this aspect of to the challenge of a plague that attacks their material civilisation openly contrasts with the defences and threatens to put an end to their importance attached to it by classical, medieval way of life. When the convictions that had and modern authors. For the Greek Thucy- forged the era of Pericles collapse, Thucydides dides, the greatest of them all from the classical moves to the very core of the epidemics and era, pestilence is so firmly established in society then understands that it is a test for Athenian that, when reading the chapters of his History society, greater even than the Persians’ attack of the Peloponnesian War on the outbreak of in Marathon or the fire in the city, earlier than typhoid fever in Athens in 430 BC, one experi- Salamis and Plataea. But history becomes en- ences a feeling of powerful recognition of the tangled: the conflict with Esparta, known as scope of the contagion, albeit a discouraging the Peloponnesian War, transforms Greek civi- feeling because of the persistence of epidem- lisation into a paradoxical state of permanent ics. Thucydides perfectly describes Athenians’ crisis, mainly because it is a war designed by attitude to the epidemic: he gives us such an Athens to export freedom to peoples, which, to accurate image that we must view his narrative achieve it, needs to subject them all. Life was IEMed 30.indd 27 30/09/2020 09:22:49 28 Epidemics in the Mediterranean: History of a Problem José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec invaded by an unbearable lightness. Family dry and fall off, ulcerating pustules all over the values, the backbone of Greek society, collapse body, diarrhoea, fever and a feeling of hotness at a time that needs answers. In this respect, as in those affected; in some cases bloody faecal Arnold Toynbee pointed out, in history every matter, damaged voice and bloody cough due to challenge requires a response. the sores that appear on the face and adjacent areas. Between the ninth and twelfth day of the In the Roman Empire, epidemics were appearance of exanthems, the disease becomes common and there were many, some of more virulent and it is then when the mortality them serious, that marked the future of rate is at its highest.2 Roman society Emperor Marcus Aurelius himself was in- fected with smallpox while on the battlefields After the 430 BC plague and the subse- in his long confrontation with the Marcomanni quent war, the response has a name: Hellenism tribes of the Danube and died in 180. (coined by Droysen in the 19th century), and there was much resistance to it, especially in Athens, with Demosthenes, or in Thebes, with Epidemic vs. Pandemic General Epaminondas. But, in the end, the law of history is implemented and the response to The last one thousand five hundred years, in the challenge shapes a new era. contrast to what happened in previous periods, have been aware of the need to distinguish between an outbreak of the many that have The Roman Empire been, are and will be, from a widespread epidemic, which is usually called a pandemic. Over the years, the miseries caused by the It is a matter of scale; an issue of which the epidemic were forgotten, but not Thucydides’ unquestionable master was the historian Pro- text. In the Roman Empire, epidemics were copius, born in Caesarea in Palestine in the common and there were many, some of them early 6th century. His work submerges us into serious, that marked the future of Roman the mind of a character with his or her private society, even at a very late age, as in the times affairs revealed (consider the efficient portrait of Marcus Aurelius. Thus, for example, the of Empress Theodora) and in the movement so-called “Antonine plague” emerged, which of the troops of General Belisarius in North in reality was a hemorrhagic smallpox that, Africa or Italy. Of course, his Secret History according to the historian Ammianus Marcel- is a post-catastrophe work but the catastrophe linus in History,1 “loaded with the force of he speaks of is not the decline and fall of the incurable disease [...] the whole world from the Roman Empire, as Edward Gibbon noted in the borders of Persia to the Rhine and Gaul with 18th century, but the great epidemic of bubonic contagion and death.” Life itself had become plague that hung over Constantinople and other impossible. The renowned physician Galen, a Byzantine cities in the year 542. firsthand witness of the epidemic, described the In the initial pages of the Secret History3 symptoms: black exanthems that after two days we see Procopius’ first observations: “About this 1. The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus, 23.6.24. 2. See M.L. Littman, “Galen and the Antonine Plague”, American Journal of Philology, vii, 94, 1973, pp. 243-255. 3. iv,1. IEMed 30.indd 28 30/09/2020 09:22:49 Quaderns de la Mediterrània 30-31, 2020: 27-33 29 Signoria of Florence. IEMed 30.indd 29 30/09/2020 09:22:50 30 Epidemics in the Mediterranean: History of a Problem José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec time Belisarius suffered another misfortune. open for Longobards, or Lombards, to settle in The people of Byzantium were ravaged by the the Po Valley (giving the current Lombardy pestilence of which I have already spoken. The region its name), and for the Franks to begin Emperor Justinian was attacked by it so severely their expansive adventure towards Italy and that it was reported that he had died.” While Spain, which finally led to the germination Procopius reviews the events and prepares of the Carolingian Empire. Some years ago, himself to provide a description in the man- Henry Pirenne stated that without Mohammed ner of Thucydides, his mentor at that time, Charlemagne was inconceivable; today we can he sees himself driven to look much further, argue that without the bubonic plague in the to link the plague with the climate change 6th century the formation of the Carolingian that he notices in the Mediterranean, with the Empire is unthinkable. advance of the desert almost to the beaches of The challenge-response thesis is structured North Africa. Procopius is amazed by this co- upon a recognisable idea that we owe to Arnold incidence, and writes sentences that show the Toynbee; and it is not a trite topic: in this case, path to understand the effect of an epidemic of it consists of introducing in the narration of a global reach in the world order. Then come the period of history a problem that determines current historians, with William Rosen first, the course of events: the problem, in this spe- who identify the flea of the black rat as the cific case, of a large-scale epidemic of bubonic vector of the plague as it carried a bacterium plague in the 6th century. It is recognised that, that at the time was completely unknown, the in that exact moment, the Mare Nostrum yersinia pestis, which was discovered by the ceased to be a value and gave way to a sea distinguished doctor Alexander Yersin. And divided into several civilisations, fragmented thus we reach an interesting conclusion. in their turn into complex religious systems. By expressing the significance of an event of While Procopius reviews the events and nature, Procopius and those who followed him prepares himself to provide a description sought to neutralise its effects. It is a way of do- in the manner of Thucydides, his mentor ing history that wants us to know that it knows at that time, he sees himself driven to that we know that it knows. What I have just look much further, to link the plague with said is not gibberish: it is the actual proof that, the climate change that he notices in the from Evagrius Scholasticus in the 6th century Mediterranean to Albert Camus in the 20th century, the plague is “the concern of all of us.” It turned out that Procopius was right.
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