Prophet of the Pandemic

Psychological Contagion and the Roots of Conflict

The Truth about Plagues

René Girard spent a large part of his career studying plagues and pandemics in ancient literature. He noticed something fascinating: in every instance, the psychological contagion that spread fear and anxiety and led to faction-forming is inseparable from the microbial and infectious contagion that caused a health crisis.

In fact, the word most frequently used for “plague” in ancient Greece (in both Sophocles and Thucydides) is nosos, which simply means “sickness.” When there is a civil war between Greek cities, it is described as a nosos. Likewise, the plague that devastates Thebes in the famous story of Oedipus Rex is a nosos.

Isn’t it also interesting that the case of the plague in Thebes is attributed to the breaking of social taboos by Oedipus? He killed his father and married his mother. For this social transgression, Oedipus caused a microbial infection. He must be killed or banished from society so that the plague will end.

For centuries people have read th…