Plagues and their Consequences: Then and Now
Over the course of human history, plagues and pandemics have ripped through the population on several occasions. These diseases bring with them death, destruction, and dismay and can leave a once stable society reeling. In the ancient world, Boccaccio, Sophocles, and Thucydides all described the disheartening affects of three separate pandemics that pushed all three of the societies that experienced them to the brink of collapse. Today, we suffer from another horrible outbreak. The Coronavirus pandemic is challenging our society today just as other pandemics challenged societies of the past. While large scale pandemics have always challenged societies, they have not always provoked the same actions in response to the problems they create. Disasters such as plagues reveal the character of a society as some societies look towards higher powers both spiritual and political in times of plague and pestilence while others lose almost all faith in these higher powers and tend t