Banhisikha Maity
B.A Student, , PG Department of English. Bhatter College, Dantan E-mail: banhi653@gmail.com
Special Issue on Diseases, Death and Disorder, 2020
Abstract
Studying or analyzing disasters has recently given birth to a relatively new interdisciplinary field called ‘Disaster Studies’ that aims at studying the impacts or aftereffects of disaster/s on the different levels of social organizations. There has hardly been a society that has not been affected and altered (slightly or at a large scale) with natural or man-made disasters. The ancient Greek and Roman texts posit that the Greco-Roman civilization has been affected largely with many of such catastrophes. Throughout history natural disasters have been understood in different ways. Whereas most of the religious texts consider disaster as a symptomatic indication of God’s wrath, the literary texts explain it in different ways. The very nature of its unpredictability and its unavoidableness always makes it a threat to human beings. A few literary texts like Homer’s Iliad and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex represent natural disasters in very subtle ways. This paper aims at analyzing these texts using the critical tools of Disaster Studies.
[Keyword: Disaster Studies, Greek Literature, Plague, Greco-Roman Civilization, Homer, Sophocles, Shakespeare]
Introduction
Any event that gives catastrophic effect on human’s lives and living conditions is usually considered as a disaster andnatural disasters aregenerally known as the manifestation of the fury of nature.The very birth of our universe is said to come into existence after a dreadful disastrous explosion, called the Big-bang in the space million of astronomical years ago.There has hardly been a society that has not been affected and altered (slightly or at a large scale) with natural or man-made disasters.Nature’s wrath had effected the human civilization in many forms like earthquakes, eruptions, wild and violent winds, floods and above all pandemic pestilences aswe are currently witnessing with the outbreak of Covid-19. Literature which holds a mirror up tothe nature put these instances of nemesis in one form or the other. Imaginative writingsrelated to the frightening natural catastrophes could be bracketed within an umbrella term of an evolving genre of literature called “Disaster Literature”. Studying or analyzing disasters has recently given birth to a relatively new interdisciplinary field called ‘Disaster Studies’ that aims at studying the impacts or aftereffects of disaster/s on the different levels of social organizations.
Disasters can be classified into two types: one is ‘natural disaster’ and another is ‘man-made disaster’. A natural disaster is anoutcome of a natural menace(e.g. volcanic explosion or earth tremor) that affects the human civilization at a large scale. In fact, modern human civilization had developed along with such natural disasters like earthquake, volcanic eruptions, avalanches, tsunamis, cyclones, floods, draughts, blizzards, wildfires etc. They are all part of terrestrial system and we have hardly control over them, but being human, we have to take precautions for them in terms of devising plans, aid organization etc. On the other hand, ‘man-made disasters’ are catastrophes resulting from the man-made hazards as opposed to the natural one. Man made hazards or disasters are sometimes referred to as an anthropogenic. War, fire, accidents, shipwreck, nuclear explosions, electric accident etc, are also a few new kind of disasters which are invariably man-made that lead to terrible casualties. In the name of the technological advancement the society’s massive influence on the ecological imbalances is also a grave phenomenon.
The ancient Greek and Roman texts posit that the Greco-Roman civilization has been affected largely with many of such catastrophes. Throughout history natural disasters have been understood in different ways. Whereas most of the religious texts consider disaster as a symptomatic indication of God’s wrath, the literary texts explain it in different ways. The very nature of its unpredictability and its unavoidableness always makes it a threat to human beings. A few literary texts like Homer’s Iliad, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare’s The Tempest represent natural disasters in very subtle ways.
The plague of Athens occurred in 430 BCE chiefly the second year of the Peloponnesian war between Sparta and Athens. The Spartans were the most powerful army in Greece, while the Athenian navy ruled in the waters of the adjacent seas. The Athenians had built strong walls around the city. As the war began, Pericles ordered the Athenians to abandon their farms and other holdings and move inside the walls, abandoning the countryside to the Spartans, who made an annual invasion and ravaged the crops but did not attack the walls. Conditions inside the city were crowded. Estimates of the Athenian population vary, but it is probable that the normal peacetime population in Metropolitan Athens and Piraeus was around 100,000 with perhaps 200,000 additional in the rest of Attica. Recognizing that many Athenians were absent from the city with military expeditions on the land and the sea, it seemed safer to conjecture that the population within the walls at least doubled as a result of the Periclean decree. It was through this port, as scholars claim, the plague arrived. According to the famous Greek historian of the war, Thucydides, the first case appeared during this time.
This is a well-known fact that, Thucydides gave an eyewitness to the plague started at this time and he had chronicled this in his History of the Peloponnesian war. But the narratives remained incomplete. He could have completed it and additionally, he might have revised his text later since the document is not complete and it breaks off 6 years before the end of the war, that is, 20 years after the plague arrived in 430 BCE. Most of the Greek historians believe that he might have died around 410.Thucydides rightly mentioned that:
Besides, I know the Athenian character from experience: you like to be told pleasant news, but if things do not turn out in the way you have been led to expect, than you blame your informants afterwards. I therefore thought it safer to let you know the truth.
(Crawley, R. The History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides. Wordsworth Edition. Chapter- 2)
The plague had struck almost 50% of the Athenians who were in the city and killed people ranging between 25% to 30%. The army in the battlefield had suffered massively from it.
In one of the sections, it is mentioned that an army camp located nearby came under this epidemic and it unwittingly helped in spreading the disease and consequently, Hagnon returned to Athens after the loss of 1,050 men out of his 4,000 men. Almost 26% of the men were dead due to this disease. (Thucydides, Peloponnesian war.Penguin classic edition. Page- 55-56)
The outbreak recurred twice, in 429 BCE and in the winter of 428-427 BCE. And it is in this way the manpower of Athens was gradually depleted and Sparta on the other hand, came into power. Thucydides also chronicled that there were many funerals being held for the plague victims.
One of the most important texts that could be analyzed in this regard is Homer’s Iliad. In Homer’s Iliad (Book-1),Greek god Apollo sent the plague upon the army of Agamemnon in an utter fury. The plague affected the coyote first and the dogs and then it turned to the humans whom it attacked time and again. As the description goes, the funeral pyres burnt by day and night. For nine days the god’s arrows rained down on the camp. The entire plague could be seen as a divine retribution. An oracle from Apollo at Delphi promised the Spartans that he would fight on their side and since Apollo’s weapons werethe arrows of plague, it didn’t affect the Spartans. The Spartans, fearing that they might contract the plague from Athenians, did not invade Attica in 429 and they returned the next year. But the connection of this disease with the Greek gods remained thereafter and a temple to Asclepius (the god of healing and the son of Apollo) was erected near the theatre of Dionysus below the South Side of the Acropolis in 420 BCE.
Another text is Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex, written at the time of Athenian plague, opens with an incurable disease that literally plagues Thebes as a result of the refusal to accept an Oracle from Apollo. The chorus specifically blames the plague on Ares, the God of war. Although this tragedy is primarily meant for the theatrical festival, Agon, the context of this play rightly connote to the Greek plague as described by Thucydides and experienced by Sophocles as well. The character of Oedipus might have been a metaphor for Pericles, who died due to this plague. A skeptic of religion, Thucydides is also a keen observer of the political and moral behavior of human beings in times of crisis.
Conclusion
“Disaster studies”, as has been observed by Michael K Lindell “address the social and behavioral aspects of sudden onset collective stress situations typically referred to as mass emergencies or disasters.” The texts analyzed in this article are important specimen in this emerging area. Contrary to the notion of disaster as a divine retribution, the secular or literary texts, conceive disaster as ‘natural’ phenomena which leads to the “mass emergencies”. Thinking in terms, these two texts from the Ancient Greek world are very unique in the field of ‘Disaster Studies’.
Works Cited:
Cary, Earnest. Foster, Herbert.B. Dio Cassius: Roman History. Herbert University Press. 1925
Fagles, Robert. Knox, Bernard. TheIliad.Penguin Classics. 1992.
Fagles, Robert. Knox, Bernard. The Three Theban Play: Antigone, Oedipus The King,
Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles.Penguin Classics.1948.
Lindell, Michael K. “Disaster Studies.” Current Sociology, vol. 61, no. 5–6, Sept. 2013, pp. 797–825, doi:10.1177/0011392113484456.
Rhodes,P.J. A History Of The Classical Greek World: 479-323 BC. Blackwell Pub. 2006. Print.
Rutherford, Richard. Classical Literature: a concise History. Blackwell pub, 2005. Print.
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest.The Arden Shakespeare. 2003.
Strassler, Robert.B. Crawley, Richard.The landmark Thucydides: a comprehensive guide to the
Peloponnesian war.Simon and Schuster. 1996
[Banhisikha Maity is a student of English Literature, UG, 4th semester, Bhatter College, Dantan. under Vidyasagar University, Medinipur. West Bengal]