Scholars have been troubled by a passage in which Thucydides observes that during the Peloponnesian War
Old stories of occurrences handed down by tradition, but scantily confirmed by experience, suddenly ceased to be incredible; there were earthquakes of unparalleled extent and violence; eclipses of the sun occurred with a frequency unrecorded in previous history; there were great droughts in sundry places and consequent famines, and that most calamitous and awfully fatal visitation, the plague. All this came upon them with the late war. (1.23.3):
What do earthquakes, and eclipses have to do with the actual military operations of the war, these scholars wonder. . Did Thucydides mention all these disasters just to magnify the significance of his subject matter, the war itself? Or , as some have suggested, did he here let slip an otherwise suppressed superstition or religiosity, a feeling that the war might have been shaped by the gods?
Ask the Syrians.
They’ve been through it all under the tyrannical regime of Assad– war, Covid, cholera, hunger, and now a devastating earthquake. They would say, I believe,, that you don’t understand any one of these disasters if you don’t understand their interconnection, the cumulative psychological toll they exact from anyone caught in the violence. If your goal as a writer is to explore human suffering, pathos, and what it does to human beings, then you have to imagine the totality of the experience.
The Syrians know all that, first hand.
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My wife and I travelled in Syria before the tyranny of Assad. The experience was enriching in many ways and the people we met were consistently kind to us,. Won’t you join s in supporting the hospitals and other medical service provided by Syrian American Medical Services–They are doing good work under extreme circumstances. Don’t worry: they are not likely to bother you with a barrage of electronic solicitations; they don’t do very sophisticated fund raising- they just do the work.
Address:
Syrian American Medical Society Foundation
PO Box 34115
Washington, DC 20043
Old stories of occurrences handed down by tradition, but scantily confirmed by experience, suddenly ceased to be incredible; there were earthquakes of unparalleled extent and violence; eclipses of the sun occurred with a frequency unrecorded in previous history; there were great droughts in sundry places and consequent famines, and that most calamitous and awfully fatal visitation, the plague. All this came upon them with the late war. (1.23.3):
What do earthquakes, and eclipses have to do with the actual military operations of the war, these scholars wonder. . Did Thucydides mention all these disasters just to magnify the significance of his subject matter, the war itself? Or , as some have suggested, did he here let slip an otherwise suppressed superstition or religiosity, a feeling that the war might have been shaped by the gods?
Ask the Syrians.
They’ve been through it all under the tyrannical regime of Assad– war, Covid, cholera, hunger, and now a devastating earthquake. They would say, I believe,, that you don’t understand any one of these disasters if you don’t understand their interconnection, the cumulative psychological toll they exact from anyone caught in the violence. If your goal as a writer is to explore human suffering, pathos, and what it does to human beings, then you have to imagine the totality of the experience.
The Syrians know all that, first hand.
--
My wife and I travelled in Syria before the tyranny of Assad. The experience was enriching in many ways and the people we met were consistently kind to us,. Won’t you join s in supporting the hospitals and other medical service provided by Syrian American Medical Services–They are doing good work under extreme circumstances. Don’t worry: they are not likely to bother you with a barrage of electronic solicitations; they don’t do very sophisticated fund raising- they just do the work.
Address:
Syrian American Medical Society Foundation
PO Box 34115
Washington, DC 20043