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Kenya: Past Plagues Teach Us About Pandemics

Published

6 years ago

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It’s one those days that I can’t quite describe. A day beyond any lazy day.

It’s that time that your mind wanders across the mysteries of the universe. Perhaps one of the reasons that we don’t like absolute silence is because we don’t like where our minds go.

That’s me today. I am sitting on my carpet having a Cuba Libre (Rum and Coke) listening to music and thinking about death.

I end up reading a history book on Marcus Aurelius. Marcus was the Roman Emperor in the 2nd century AD during one of Rome’s less prosperous times, with a decade of plague going across Europe.

The plague — most likely smallpox — was named the Antonine Plague, after the emperor, and saw the decimation of empires and with a massive death toll of around five million people.

Historians write how carts would leave the city piled with thousands of bodies each day. Marcus wasn’t particularly a religious or superstitious man but as the leader of the Empire, he had to perform his religious duties as a way of comforting his people.

He was also a man who sought truth and over time became one of the proponents of stoicism.

FEAR

The plague, which they referred to as the pestilence, had ravaged the cities and trade, decimated the population and there was famine.

Many people turned to religion and others became charlatans or con men. Two con men stood out. One preached on wild fig trees in Campus Martius, talking about how the plague was a sign that the gods would strike the earth with fire and that it was the end of the world.