The first passage is from William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (New York: Anchor,
1998 [1976]), 215-17.
Wholesale demoralization and simple
surrender of will to live certainly played a large part in the destruction of
Amerindian communities. Numerous recorded instances of failure to tend newborn
babies so that they died unnecessarily, as well as outright suicide, attest the
intensity of Amerindian bewilderment and despair. European military action and
harsh treatment of laborers gathered forcibly for some large-scale undertaking
also had a role in uprooting and destroying old social structures. But human
violence and disregard, however brutal, was not the major factor causing
Amerindian populations to melt away as they did. After all, it was not in the
interest of the Spaniards and other Europeans to allow potential taxpayers and
the Indian work force to diminish. The main destructive role was certainly
played by epidemic disease.
The first encounter came in 1518,
when smallpox reached Hispaniola and attacked the Indian population so
virulently that Bartoleme de Las Casas believed that only a thousand survived.
From Hispaniola, smallpox traveled to Mexico, ariving in 1520. It affected
Cortez's Tlaxcalan allies on the coast as well as those who had attacked him;
but exact details of its overland transmission cannot be reconstructed. All the
same, the outbreak in Tenochtitlan some four months after Cortez had been
forced to withdraw looked very like divine punishment for those who had
attacked the Spaniards. As a result, when Cortez returned to central Mexico,
the peoples living around the lake decided to join him. This was important,
since Cortez's Spanish forces remained tiny, and his Indian allies from the
coast were insufficiently numerous to isolate Tenochtitlan from the surrounding
communities that customarily supplied the capital city with food. Hence, once
their lakeside subjects abandoned them, the Aztecs' fate was sealed, despite
their brave, and indeed suicidal, resistance.
Clearly, if smallpox had not broken
out when it did, Cortez's victory would have been more difficult, and perhaps
impossible. The same was true of Pizarro's filibuster into Peru. For the
smallpox epidemic in Mexico did not confine its ravages to Aztec territory.
Instead, it spread to Guatemala, where it appeared in 1520, and continued
southward, penetrating the Inca domain in 1525 or 1526. Consequences there were
just as drastic as among the Aztecs. The reigning Inca died of the disease
while away from his capital on campaign in the North. His designated heir also
died, leaving no legitimate successor. Civil war ensued, and it was amid this
wreckage of the Inca political structure that Pizarro and his crew of roughnecks
made their way to Cuzco and plundered its treasures. He met no serious military
resistance at all.
Two points seem particularly worth
emphasizing here. First, Spaniards and Indians readily agreed that epidemic disease
was a particularly dreadful and unambiguous form of divine punishment.
Interpretation of pestilence as a sign of God's displeasure was a part of the
Spanish inheritance, enshrined in the Old Testament and in the whole Christian
tradition. The Amerindians, lacking all experience of anything remotely like
the initial series of lethal epidemics, concurred. Their religious doctrines
recognized that superhuman power lodged in deities whose behavior toward men
was often angry. It was natural, therefore, for them to assign an unexampled
effect to a supernatural cause, quite apart from the Spanish missionary efforts
that urged the same interpretation of the catastrophe upon dazed and demoralized
converts.
Secondly, the Spaniards were nearly
immune from the terrible disease that raged so mercilessly among the Indians.
They had almost always been exposed in childhood and so developed effective
immunity. Given the interpretation of the cause of pestilence accepted by both
parties, such a manifestation of divine partiality for the invaders was
conclusive. The gods of the Aztecs as much as the God of the Christians seemed
to agree that the white newcomers had divine approval for all they did. And while
God thus seemed to favor the whites, regardless of their mortality and piety or
lack thereof, his wrath was visited upon the Indians with an unrelenting harshness
that often puzzled and distressed the Christian missionaries who soon took
charge of the moral and religious life of their converts along the frontiers of
Spain's American dominions.
From the Amerindian point of view,
stunned acquiescence in Spanish superiority was the only possible response. No
matter how few their numbers or how brutal and squalid their behavior, the
Spaniards prevailed. Native authority structures crumbled; the old gods seemed
to have abdicated. The situation was ripe for the mass conversions recorded so
proudly by Christian missionaries. Docility to the commands of priests,
viceroys, landowners, mining entrepreneurs, tax collectors, and anyone else who
spoke with a loud voice and had a white skin was another inevitable
consequence. When the divine and natural orders were both unambiguous in
declaring against native tradition and belief, what ground for resistance remained?
The extraordinary ease of Spanish conquests and the success a few hundred men
had in securing control of vast areas and millions of persons is unintelligible
on any other basis.
* * *
The second passage comes from book two of Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, translation
by Benjamin Jowett. The plague that befalls Athens in the second year of
the war follows closely on the heels of Pericles’ eloquent funeral oration, in
which he glorifies the men fallen in the course of the war and the city for
which they made the ultimate sacrifice. Soon after,
the plague broke out at Athens for
the first time. A similar disorder is said to have previously smitten many
places, particularly Lemnos, but there is no record of such a pestilence
occurring elsewhere, or of so great a destruction of human life. For a while
physicians, in ignorance of the nature of the disease, sought to apply
remedies; but it was in vain, and they themselves were among the first victims,
because they oftenest came into contact with it. No human art was of any avail,
and as to supplications in temples, enquiries of oracles, and the like, they
were utterly useless, and at last men were overpowered by the calamity and gave
them all up.
(48) The disease is said to have
begun south of Egypt in Aethiopia; thence it descended into Egypt and Libya,
and after spreading over the greater part of the Persian empire, suddenly fell
upon Athens. It first attacked the inhabitants of the Piraeus, and it was
supposed that the Peloponnesians had poisoned the cisterns, no conduits having
as yet been made there. It afterwards reached the upper city, and then the
mortality became far greater. As to its probable origin or the causes which
might or could have produced such a disturbance of nature, every man, whether a
physician or not, will give his own opinion. But I shall describe its actual
course, and the symptoms by which any one who knows them beforehand may
recognise the disorder should it ever reappear. For I was myself attacked, and
witnessed the sufferings of others.
(49) The season was admitted to
have been remarkably free from ordinary sickness; and if anybody was already
ill of any other disease, it was absorbed in this. Many who were in perfect
health, all in a moment, and without any apparent reason, were seized with
violent heats in the head and with redness and inflammation of the eyes. Internally
the throat and the tongue were quickly suffused with blood, and the breath
became unnatural and fetid. There followed sneezing and hoarseness; in a short
time the disorder, accompanied by a violent cough, reached the chest; then
fastening lower down, it would move the stomach and bring on all the vomits of
bile to which physicians have ever given names; and they were very distressing.
An ineffectual retching producing violent convulsions attacked most of the
sufferers; some as soon as the previous symptoms had abated, others not until
long afterwards. The body externally was not so very hot to the touch, nor yet
pale; it was of a livid colour inclining to red, and breaking out in pustules
and ulcers. But the internal fever was intense; the sufferers could not bear to
have on them even the finest linen garment; they insisted on being naked, and
there was nothing which they longed for more eagerly than to throw themselves
into cold water. And many of those who had no one to look after them actually plunged
into the cisterns, for they were tormented by unceasing thirst, which was not
in the least assuaged whether they drank little or much. They could not sleep;
a restlessness which was intolerable never left them. While the disease was at
its height the body, instead of wasting away, held out amid these sufferings in
a marvellous manner, and either they died on the seventh or ninth day, not of
weakness, for their strength was not exhausted, but of internal fever, which
was the end of most; or, if they survived, then the disease descended into the
bowels and there produced violent ulceration; severe diarrhoea at the same time
set in, and at a later stage caused exhaustion, which finally with few
exceptions carried them off. For the disorder which had originally settled in
the head passed gradually through the whole body, and, if a person got over the
worst, would often seize the extremities and leave its mark, attacking the
privy parts and the fingers and the toes; and some escaped with the loss of
these, some with the loss of their eyes. Some again had no sooner recovered
than they were seized with a forgetfulness of all things and knew neither
themselves nor their friends.
(50) The general character of the
malady no words can describe, and the fury with which it fastened upon each
sufferer was too much for human nature to endure. There was one circumstance in
particular which distinguished it from ordinary diseases. The birds and animals
which feed on human flesh, although so many bodies were lying unburied, either
never came near them, or died if they touched them. This was proved by a
remarkable disappearance of the birds of prey, which were not to be seen either
about the bodies or anywhere else; while in the case of the dogs the result was
even more obvious, because they live with man.
(51) Such was the general nature of
the disease: I omit many strange peculiarities which characterised individual
cases. None of the ordinary sicknesses attacked any one while it lasted, or, if
they did, they ended in the plague. Some of the sufferers died from want of
care, others equally who were receiving the greatest attention. No single
remedy could be deemed a specific; for that which did good to one did harm to
another. No constitution was of itself strong enough to resist or weak enough
to escape the attacks; the disease carried off all alike and defied every mode
of treatment. Most appalling was the despondency which seized upon any one who
felt himself sickening; for he instantly abandoned his mind to despair and,
instead of holding out, absolutely threw away his chance of life. Appalling too
was the rapidity with which men caught the infection; dying like sheep if they
attended on one another; and this was the principal cause of mortality. When
they were afraid to visit one another, the sufferers died in their solitude, so
that many houses were empty because there had been no one left to take care of
the sick; or if they ventured they perished, especially those who aspired to
heroism. For they went to see their friends without thought of themselves and
were ashamed to leave them, at a time when the very relations of the dying were
at last growing weary and ceased even to make lamentations, overwhelmed by the
vastness of the calamity. But whatever instances there may have been of such
devotion, more often the sick and the dying were tended by the pitying care of
those who had recovered, because they knew the course of the disease and were
themselves free from apprehension. For no one was ever attacked a second time,
or not with a fatal result. All men congratulated them, and they themselves, in
the excess of their joy at the moment, had an innocent fancy that they could
not die of any other sickness.
(52) The crowding of the people out
of the country into the city aggravated the misery; and the newly-arrived
suffered most. For, having no houses of their own, but inhabiting in the height
of summer stifling huts, the mortality among them was dreadful, and they
perished in wild disorder. The dead lay as they had died, one upon another,
while others hardly alive wallowed in the streets and crawled about every
fountain craving for water. The temples in which they lodged were full of the
corpses of those who died in them; for the violence of the calamity was such
that men, not knowing where to turn, grew reckless of all law, human and
divine. The customs which had hitherto been observed at funerals were
universally violated, and they buried their dead each one as best he could.
Many, having no proper appliances, because the deaths in their household had
been so numerous already, lost all shame in the burial of the dead. When one
man had raised a funeral pile, others would come, and throwing on their dead
first, set fire to it; or when some other corpse was already burning, before
they could be stopped, would throw their own dead upon it and depart.
(53) There were other and worse
forms of lawlessness which the plague introduced at Athens. Men who had
hitherto concealed what they took pleasure in, now grew bolder. For, seeing the
sudden change,--how the rich died in a moment, and those who had nothing
immediately inherited their property,--they reflected that life and riches were
alike transitory, and they resolved to enjoy themselves while they could, and
to think only of pleasure. Who would be willing to sacrifice himself to the law
of honour when he knew not whether he would ever live to be held in honour? The
pleasure of the moment and any sort of thing which conduced to it took the
place both of honour and of expediency. No fear of Gods or law of man deterred
a criminal. Those who saw all perishing alike, thought that the worship or
neglect of the Gods made no difference. For offences against human law no
punishment was to be feared; no one would live long enough to be called to
account. Already a far heavier sentence had been passed and was hanging over a
man's head; before that fell, why should he not take a little pleasure?
(54) Such was the grievous calamity
which now afflicted the Athenians; within the walls their people were dying,
and without, their country was being ravaged. In their troubles they naturally
called to mind a verse which the elder men among them declared to have been
current long ago:
A Dorian war will come and a plague with it.
There was a dispute about the
precise expression; some saying that limos,
a famine, and not loimos, a plague,
was the original word. Nevertheless, as might have been expected, for men's
memories reflected their sufferings, the argument in favour of loimos prevailed
at the time. But if ever in future years another Dorian war arises which
happens to be accompanied by a famine, they will probably repeat the verse in
the other form. The answer of the oracle to the Lacedaemonians when the God was
asked 'whether they should go to war or not,' and he replied 'that if they
fought with all their might, they would conquer, and that he himself would take
their part,' was not forgotten by those who had heard of it, and they quite
imagined that they were witnessing the fulfilment of his words. The disease
certainly did set in immediately after the invasion of the Peloponnesians, and
did not spread into Peloponnesus in any degree worth speaking of, while Athens
felt its ravages most severely, and next to Athens the places which were most
populous. Such was the history of the plague.
* * *
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