The Athenian Plague: Democracy's First Pandemic

The History of Greece: Philosophy, Empire, and Endless Reinvention — Fexingo History · Jun 30, 2026 · 8m · transcript

In 430 BCE, as Athens stood triumphant against Sparta in the first year of the Peloponnesian War, a mysterious disease swept through the city, killing perhaps a third of its population—including its leader Pericles. Lucas and Luna explore the Plague of Athens through the eyes of its only surviving eyewitness, the historian Thucydides, who fell ill himself and recovered. They reconstruct what the disease was (and still isn't definitively identified), how it shattered civic and religious norms, and how it accelerated Athens' descent from Periclean grandeur into the cynical demagoguery…