After the plague

Lesson plan

3 class periods of about 45 minutes.

1. Day 1 · 45 min

   Athens after the plague

   1. 5 minutes: Pose the unit question: Did epidemics change societies, or did people go back to normal? Students name one habit that changed in an emergency and say whether it later went back.
   2. 5 minutes: The Plague at Athens, and Pericles Answers the Athenians is High intensity: detailed symptoms, unburied bodies and funeral pyres. Today's passages, 2.52.3–2.53.4, describe temples full of corpses and families using other people's pyres, but no symptoms. Tell students this before reading, and let anyone who needs to start at 2.53.
   3. 15 minutes: Read 2.52.3–2.53.4 together. Students list what changed in burials, spending, work, and respect for the gods and the law.
   4. 10 minutes: Discuss the source's question: Thucydides says people stopped fearing the gods and the law. What reasons does he give, and do they follow from what he describes?
   5. 10 minutes: Read 2.65.2–2.65.4. Ask what the Athenians did with their grief and their anger, and whether this looks like a city going back to normal.

2. Day 2 · 45 min

   Constantinople after the plague

   1. 5 minutes: The Plague at Constantinople is High intensity: detailed symptoms and deaths, and bodies piled in towers and dumped at sea. Tell students that today's passages describe a city that stopped working, with no symptoms, that 2.23.12 tells of bodies carried off by sea in boats, and that the reading skips 2.23.9–2.23.11, where the bodies are piled in the towers.
   2. 15 minutes: Read 2.23.12–2.23.20. Students list what changed for a time: burials, the factions, people's religion, the market, work, and how officials dressed.
   3. 10 minutes: Look closely at 2.23.16, where Procopius says the survivors became worse than before. He wrote years later and slips into the present tense here. Ask what that tells us about when he formed this judgment.
   4. 15 minutes: Compare burial customs in Athens (2.52.4) and Constantinople (2.23.12), and whether people went back to their old ways in each city. Students write three sentences.

3. Day 3 · 45 min

   A bishop's household after the plague

   1. 10 minutes: Read the History tab of The Plague in the Bishop of Rochester’s Household (Low intensity: deaths listed, nothing graphic). Note that the writer worked for the bishop and took his side against the prior.
   2. 10 minutes: Pairs read passages 3 to 7 and 14 to 17 and list how the plague touched the bishop's household, the clergy and the estates.
   3. 15 minutes: Run the source's activity. Half the class drafts the bishop's order of June 27, 1349 (passage 6), telling chaplains to serve for the old pay; the other half drafts the chaplains' reply. Read two of each aloud, and point out that the order tries to make pay go back to what it was.
   4. 10 minutes: Students answer the unit question in a paragraph, using at least two of the three sources: what changed after the plague in Athens, Constantinople and Rochester, and what went back to how it was?

Read these sources

In this order. Each opens in Hearth Library with the original beside plain English, and a History tab on who made it and how far to trust it.

1. 1

   The Plague at Athens, and Pericles Answers the Athenians

   Thucydides, 430–400 BCE. Moderate.

   Plain language; Pericles's argument needs context.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   oracle

   a shrine where a god was believed to answer questions, or the answer given there

   contagion

   the spread of disease from person to person

   pyre

   a pile of wood for burning a dead body

   Assembly

   the meeting of Athenian citizens that made the city's decisions

   general

   one of ten elected officials who led the Athenian armies and much of the city's politics

   envoy

   a messenger sent to bargain with another state

   tyranny

   rule by one person who took power without a legal right

   humors

   the body fluids (later fixed as four, blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) that doctors believed had to stay in balance

   1. Comprehension Trace the course of the disease in one sufferer, from the first signs to death or recovery. What happened to many who survived?
   2. Analysis Thucydides says people stopped fearing the gods and the law. What reasons does he give, and do they follow from what he has described?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Thucydides says he had the disease himself. How does that make his account stronger, and what might a survivor leave out? He also says he wrote the speeches in his own words, keeping as close as he could to the general sense of what was said. How should that change the way we read Pericles's defense?
   4. Connection Procopius, in The Plague at Constantinople, modeled his account on this one. Compare how the two writers describe what happened to burial customs, and what each says about the gods.

   Activity Hold the Athenian Assembly of 430 BCE. Half the class argues for sending envoys to make peace with Sparta; half defends Pericles's policy. Each side may use only evidence from the text. Vote, then read 2.65 to compare with what the Athenians actually did.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

2. 2

   The Plague at Constantinople

   Procopius, 550–551. Moderate.

   Plain words in long, careful descriptions; the court, the factions, and Procopius's debt to Thucydides need context.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   bubo

   a painful swelling of a gland in the groin, armpit, or neck; the mark of bubonic plague

   carbuncle

   a hard, dark, inflamed lump in the flesh

   contagion

   the spread of disease from person to person

   delirium

   a state of wild, confused thinking, often with frightening visions, brought on by illness

   demon

   an evil spirit; many Christians of Procopius's time believed demons could cause illness

   faction

   a rival group within a community; in Constantinople, the Blues and the Greens, clubs of chariot-racing fans

   providence

   God's care for the world and plan for what happens in it

   sophist

   a learned speaker or teacher; Procopius uses the word for clever people with empty explanations

   1. Comprehension How did the disease begin in a person, according to Procopius, and what different courses could it then take? What sign gave a sick person the best hope of recovery?
   2. Analysis Procopius says the plague's cause can be traced only to God, yet he also says it seemed to spare the wickedest people. What, if anything, does he think the plague teaches? How does his own answer differ from those of the theorists he mocks in 22.1?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Procopius was in Byzantium when the plague arrived, but he wrote years later and modeled his account on Thucydides. Which details seem most likely to come from what he saw for himself, and which might be borrowed or exaggerated? Look closely at the daily death tolls in 23.2 and at the comment on the survivors in 23.16.
   4. Connection Thucydides (The Plague at Athens, and Pericles Answers the Athenians) was Procopius's model. Thucydides saw the disease pass to those who nursed the sick (2.51); what does Procopius say about whether it passed from person to person (22.23), and what evidence does he give? Where else does his account follow Thucydides, and where does it part from it?

   Activity You are Theodore, the official Justinian put in charge of burying the dead. Using only details from the text, write a one-page report to the emperor on what you found, what you did, and what you still need. Then compare reports with a classmate and discuss what an official report would leave out that Procopius puts in.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

3. 3

   The Plague in the Bishop of Rochester’s Household

   William Dene, 1349–1350. Moderate.

   Short entries in plain language, but full of church offices; the notes explain the few that matter.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   bishop

   the leader of the Christian church in a city and its region

   chronicle

   a record of events set down year by year

   chaplain

   a priest without a parish of his own, paid to say Mass or to serve for another priest

   parish

   the district served by one church and its priest

   abbess

   the woman in charge of a community of nuns

   manor

   a lord’s estate, with its fields, buildings, and tenants

   1. Comprehension List the ways the plague touched the bishop’s household, the clergy of his diocese, and his estates.
   2. Analysis The chronicle never describes a sick person. What does the writer record instead, and what does that suggest about who he was and what he cared about?
   3. Analysis (reliability) The writer took the bishop’s side against the prior. How might that shape the line about the prior having plenty while the monks threshed their own grain? How could a historian check it?
   4. Connection Read The Plague as a Test: A Bishop's Sermon at Carthage, which Cyprian preached during an epidemic in the third century. What does each source suggest a church leader was expected to do in an epidemic, and what problems could he not solve?

   Activity Half the class drafts the bishop’s order of June 27, 1349, to the chaplains, in plain words, explaining why they must serve for the old pay. The other half drafts the chaplains’ reply. The class then discusses whose case was stronger, and why the king and the bishop sided as they did.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

To finish

Come back to the question: Did epidemics change societies, or did people go back to normal? Ask students to answer it with evidence from at least two of the sources, and to say which source they trust most and why.

Standards

Students trace what an epidemic changed in law, burial, wages and church life, and how a chronicler's side shapes his record.

Go further

Other units

Who gets blamed? · The healer's burden · Governments, quarantine, and consent · Explaining disease before germs · Faith and catastrophe · Case study: smallpox · Reading sources critically

Encyclopedia

The Black Death

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