Forays into Etymology: We, the People (Saccopoulos)

When a plague is visited upon the people, 

Such as the plague that killed quite a few 

At the beginning of the Peloponnesian war 

Not least the leader of democratic Athens, 

A noble lineage or money in the bank 

Provide no shield against affliction,

For epidemics are not only democratic

But hail from the same word, δήμος,

Demos, the people, at the core of both,

In charge of government, κράτος, in the latter

While in the former pounded on by disease.

You need not worry about endemic maladies,

Such as Asiatic Cholera, restricted, as per label,

To people in a certain well-defined geographic area 

Unless you yourself in such an area reside

Or happen, like a millionaire aviator,

To be a paranoid hypochondriac, secluded

To end your life in misery for fear of germs,

Ebola, hepatitis, swine flu to name but a few, 

Isolating yourself from effervescent demos,

Not very different from Athenian idiots

In pursuit of privacy, keeping to themselves, 

Scoffing democracy and shunning the agora. 

Pandemics, however, are a serious matter,

Not demographically constrained, and everyone, 

Everywhere, all the people, are under threat

And fleeing Florence

To be sequestered for ten days in the country 

Telling each other tales of cunning, perfidy and love 

In the vernacular, demotic, local idiom

May fear of apocalypse assuage,

But only for a spell,

And will in no way prevent Black Death

From devastating the known world.

It is a fact that rabble-rousers with little or no effort

Take charge during pandemics

To spearhead panic and kindle pandemonium,

A word of unrelated origin, though demons

Have been known to inflame the demos

Issuing forth as demagogues, leaders

Possibly virtuous initially of people,

Who soon, nevertheless, deem it expedient to pander, 

Preying on prejudice, ignorance, hate and fear.

You may now wonder why the Demiurge,

Who through his έργον, work,

Created all people out of chaos

As Plato proclaimed and preachers

Of major religious dogmas readily affirm,

Would find it paramount to often cull the human herd 

Through visitations of endemics, epidemics and pandemics? 

Ah! That is a question not I nor anyone I know can answer.

2014

Christos Saccopoulos was born in 1943 and grew up in Athens, Greece. He studied architecture at Iowa State University, where he earned the B.Arch and the M.Arch. degrees. He has taught at four U.S. universities, retiring from Louisiana State University, where he served as Dean of the College of Art and Design. "Forays Into Etymology: We, The People" first appeared in Beachcomber's Report, available through Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Beachcombers-Report-Poems-Christos-Saccopoulos/dp/6180011699.
Reprinted with the author's permission.