History

Boccaccio vs. Thucydides

Disease may primarily be a health deteriorating agents but it will also bring social change. In The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio elaborates on the social changes and extraordinary behavior of the people in the City of Florence during the 14th century A.D. Similarly Thucydides tells of his personal experience with the plague in Athens during the 5th century B.C. in "The Plague"; History of the Peloponnesian War. He focuses on the effects it had on peoples behaviors and religious beliefs. By comparing Boccaccio and Thucydides work, one is able to understand the perspective each one has on the links between the spread of the disease and social change, while Boccaccio focuses on the people whose behavior caused them to abandon others to death and this exemplifying a lack of morality, Thucydides is more concerned with the change in religious beliefs caused by the plague.

Through the eyes of Boccaccio, plague in the City of Florence due has formed three basic forms of social groups. First, there were people who believed that "a sober and abstemious mode of living considerably reduced the risk of infection" therefore they lived in isolation from the rest of the people (Boccaccio 7). Secondly, there were the people who believed the contrary of the first group. They believed that in order to escape this "evil was to drink heavily, enjoy life to the full..., and shrug the whole thing off as one enormous joke", which in the end this did nothing in their benefit (7). Lastly, there was the group in the middle who neither acted like the first group or the second group; they just did "no more than satisfy their appetite" (8). Due to the disease, different people decided to link together into groups as described, this in essence restructured the social standing of the people. Many people did not know what to do or how to act, a mass number of people believed that the only way to get away from the agonizing plague was to run from the city. People that decided make a run for it left everything and everyone behind. Amazingly, majority seemed to be concerned with there own lives only and began to abandon relatives and even their own children as if they were not their children (9).

Although the majority of the people had the fear of contacting the disease, there were those who did everything in their own power to help out the ill and provide comfort. There was a type of unity between those who helped out others, but sadly as soon as they came in contact to those whom were ill, they contacted the disease and died. The disease killed as rapid as three days from the first sight of symptoms. As people began to notice the extremes of the disease and the rapidness of its spread they began to loose control and began looking out for themselves only (6-7). In the minds of the people it was soon implemented that there was no cure for this plague. Those that treated the ill seemed to be "not prescribing the appropriate cure" (6).

Along with this deadly plague came a new view. It was tradition for families to give a dead person a proper burial but during this time that was not found anywhere within the city. Due to the vast amount of deaths that the city was encountering, it got to the point where dead bodies were dumped on the streets and left there for the world to view (10). Attributable to the plague people gained a new perspective on life, the way they lived, and on their traditions. This new form of life aroused during this time period and as devastating as it seems, things only got worse.

Parallel to the events that were happening in the city, the townspeople were suffering the same way. The only significant difference in the towns was that the poor peasants had no one there to care for them, such as doctors and so forth (12). This meant that out on the fields hundreds of corpses were laying out like animals. In both the City of Florence and in Athens, the animals rejected the bodies of the dead that lay out on the streets abandoned. This pestilence not only spread from human to human but if any animal was exposed to it; it would also contact the disease and die rapidly (153). This sickness caused great social change, by eliminating the majority of the city's population.

After reading Boccaccio's work it is visible through the descriptions of the peoples behaviors that everyone was in one way or another just trying to avoid the plague. Everyone had various reactions to the plague but in general they were trying to escape it. They knew what it could do to them in a matter of days; kill them.

In Athens, Thucydides, who was infected with the plague himself, tells of his observations and