his eyes recently to more issl wholeheartedly that plague that devasted athens as it warred with sparta. the epidemic contributed to athens' defeat and helped bring an end to its expement with democracy. just one example of how disease has shaped human history. >> everything about us, our art, our culture, our religion has been informed, inflected, should say, with the passage of death and suffering in the forms ofse. >> brown: frank snowden, professor emeritus at yale university, is author of"ci epidemics and y." he now lives in rome, a city slowly re-opening after imposing a strict lockdown. it's also a city that has seen the impact of disease before. skeletal remains from the 5th century a.d. show victims of a malaria outbak, one that wreaked havoc on the roman empire's military d economic might. pandemics throughout history, often captured in the imaginations of artists, have hit in specific ways, with different imincts. ginninhe 14th century, bubonic plague changed the course of western civilization. a third of europe's population perished. historians see enormous political and eco