Plague and pestilence in literature and art

by Sir Raymond Henry Payne Crawfurd

Such was the origin and the evolution of the scenic plays (ludi scenici), introduced in the first place to divert the mind and distract the spirit from the crushing catastrophe of pestilence. The visitation was followed by an earthquake, which is said to have opened a gaping abyss in the Forum, into which Manlius Curtius hurled himself in full armour—a willing human scapegoat sacrificed to the angry gods.

When these various measures failed to allay the pestilence, an old custom of driving a nail into the temple of Jupiter was solemnly revived. This practice in its inception purposed to make a calendar of years. But once when a dictator had driven in the nail, forthwith a pestilence had ceased. So now it was urged that, if a dictator and no common magistrate drove in the nail, the pestilence would cease. So says Livy, but there is abundant evidence, both from ancient literature and from modern folk-lore, that he has missed the real significance of the act. We find traces of a world-wide belief in the possibility of transferring the evils of the body, as well as the evils of the soul, to some other being or animal, or thing. The scapegoat is familiar to all, and we know from Leviticus,[76] that at the cleansing of a leper the Jews let a bird fly away. Pliny[77] too tells us, that a Roman cure for epilepsy was to drive a nail into the ground, where the epileptic’s head had struck it on falling: a similar cure for toothache was practised in France and Germany, and for ague in Suffolk.[78] In each instance the idea was to nail fast the evil thing, and so hinder it from returning to trouble its former host. A story given by L. Strackerjan,[79] and quoted by Frazer, comes even more closely to the point. During the Thirty Years’ War pestilence came from Neuenkirchen, in Oldenburg, to a neighbouring farmhouse in the semblance of a blue vapour, and entering the house found its way into a hole in the door-post. The farmer seized a peg and hammered it into the hole, so that it should not come out. After a time he drew out the peg, believing the danger was past, but out came the blue vapour once more. Every member of the unhappy household fell a victim to the pestilence.

In 348 b.c. pestilence[80] was again rife, and a lectisternium was observed at the instance of the Sibylline books.

In 331 b.c. Rome was again in the grip of a devastating pestilence.[81] Numbers of the Senate had already perished, when a female slave came to the aediles and declared that the victims had died of poison. She would show them matrons actually engaged in compounding poisons, and a store laid up in readiness for use. Sure enough, drugs were found in the possession of two women of patrician rank, Cornelia and Sergia, and in spite of their protest that these were harmless, they were compelled to swallow them, and fell victims to their own nefarious devices. One hundred and seventy matrons were implicated in their guilt, and paid the penalty with their lives. Rome offered a human holocaust to the spirit of panic fear.

The grim suspicion of poison was not now formulated for the first time, for the Athenians had suspected the Lacedaemonians of poisoning their wells. But now the charge appears as a deadly and insidious weapon, ready to the hand of every infamous or ill-disposed informer. The hideous catalogue of cruelties inflicted on innocent victims, under the spell of this illusion, forms a dark chapter in the history of epidemic pestilence.

In the face of another pestilence[82] in 312 b.c., a dictator was again appointed to drive a nail into the temple of Jupiter.

We have seen the succession of Rome’s epidemics almost unbroken throughout the fourth and fifth centuries. We are accustomed to think of Roman character as trained in the school of interminable warfare, but we are apt to forget that there was another, a sterner and more desolating enemy, almost always alert within her gates, ‘the pestilence that walketh in darkness.’ In the perpetual struggle for existence on the stricken fields of battle and of pestilence, young Rome had found, as yet, no leisure for the loftier pursuits of the human intellect, and had developed no literature and no art of her own, worthy of either name. As Greek and Roman were alike children of one common stock, some strong abiding influences must have been at work, leading development along widely divergent paths: and perhaps in epidemic pestilence, with which Greece was but little familiar till the end of the fifth century at least, we may look for one such agency.

In 295 b.c., during a fierce pestilence, Livy[83] says that the consul’s son built a temple to Venus, close to the circus out of fines inflicted on some matrons convicted of adultery, as though their sin was believed to be its cause. In the Middle Ages likewise we shall find many churches built in commemoration of particular plagues.

Only two years later a violent pestilence[84] drove the magistrates to consult the Sibylline books, and in obedience to their instruction ambassadors were sent from Rome to Epidaurus to demand the serpent of Aesculapius, in which the god seemed to be incarnate. At first nothing was done beyond devoting one day to the supplication of Aesculapius. But in the following year ambassadors set out under the leadership of Quintus Ogulnius[85] and on arrival at Epidaurus were taken to the temple of Aesculapius, and invited to carry away whatever was needed to rescue their city from pestilence. Thereupon the serpent, which rarely appeared to the Epidaurians, presented itself for three days in the most public parts of the city, and then of its own accord made its way to the Roman galley, in which it was transported to Antium, after the ambassadors had been instructed how to pay honour to the god. After a brief sojourn there it re-entered the Roman galley, and scarce had they reached the Tiber, when it swam to the island in mid-stream, where a temple was dedicated afterwards to Aesculapius. A coin of Commodus[86] and a medallion of Antoninus ([see Plate I, p.4]) survive to commemorate the event. To this day there may be seen on some large blocks of stone, moulded to the shape of the poop of a ship, on the Isola Tiberina, the head of an effigy of Aesculapius in relief, with the serpent twined round his staff.

So it was pestilence that brought Aesculapius to Rome, as it had brought Apollo before him. In this temple in the Tiber the healing ritual of the god flourished for some centuries, and in recent excavations many votive emblems of diseased parts of the body have been brought to light. With few intervals, and those of no long duration, the island has been dedicated to works of healing down to the present day. Claudius ordained that sick slaves should be exposed on the island, and those that recovered were to receive their freedom. The hospital of S. Giovanni Calabita, founded in 1575, stands there still. In 1656 the whole island was converted into a lazaretto for the victims of the plague.