History
...social change. In The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio elaborates on the social changes and extraordinary behavior of the people in the City of Florence during the 14th century A.D. Similarly Thucydides tells of his personal experience with the plague in Athens during the 5th century B.C. in "The Plague"; History of the Peloponnesian War. He focuses on the effects it had on peoples behaviors and religious beliefs. By comparing Boccaccio and Thucydides work, one is able to understand the perspective each one has on the links between the spread of the disease and social change, while Boccaccio focuses on the people whose behavior caused them to abandon others to death and this exemplifying a lack of morality, Thucydides is more concerned with the change in religious beliefs caused by the plague.
Through the eyes of Boccaccio, plague in the City of Florence due has formed three basic forms of social groups. First, there were people who believed that "a sober and abstemious mode of living considerably reduced the risk of infection" therefore they lived in isolation from the rest of the people (Boccaccio 7). Secondly, there were the people who believed the contrary of the first group. They believed that in order to escape this "evil was to drink heavily, enjoy life to the fullÂ…, and shrug the whole thing off as one enormous joke", which in the end this did nothing in their benefit (7). Lastly, there was the group in the middle who neither acted like the first group or the second group; they just did "no more than satisfy their appetite" (8). Due to the disease, different people decided to link together into groups as described, this in essence restructured the social standing of the people. Many people did not know what to do or how to act, a mass number of people believed that the only way to get away from the agonizing plague was to run from the city. People...
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