Latest / Ancient Greece: Philosophy, Democracy, and Endless War — Fexingo History / The Death of Pericles: When Athens Lost Its Anchor
Transcript
- Lucas: Last time we talked about the Pnyx, the physical space where Athenian democracy happened. And that was the world Pericles helped shape. But there's a shadow over that whole period — the plague that killed him and changed everything. Luna: The plague that hit Athens during the Peloponnesian War — I've heard it was brutal, but I don't know the details. Lucas: It's one of the most famous epidemics in ancient history, largely because Thucydides gives us a clinical, almost medical description. He survived it himself. He says it started in Ethiopia, moved through Egypt and Libya, and hit Piraeus first in the summer of 430 BCE. Then it spread into Athens proper. Lucas: Thucydides describes the symptoms in gruesome detail: fever, red eyes, bloody throat and tongue, a cough, then painful ulcers. People had such extreme internal heat that they couldn't stand clothes or linen, wanted to throw themselves into cold water. Many died by the seventh or eighth day. Luna: That sounds like something Ebola-level. Did they have any idea what caused it? Lucas: No. They blamed miasma, bad air, the gods. Doctors were helpless, and since they treated the sick, they died in the highest numbers. Even religious supplication failed — prayers and oracles did nothing. Thucydides says people stopped fearing the gods because everyone was dying regardless of piety. Lucas: The social breakdown was almost as deadly as the disease itself. Funerals became haphazard. Normally, Athenian burial customs were elaborate — families would hold a prothesis, a viewing, then a procession to the Kerameikos cemetery. But during the plague, bodies were piled on pyres, sometimes dumped on others' already burning pyres. Law and order collapsed. Luna: So the very rituals that held the community together just crumbled. Lucas: Exactly. And Thucydides writes that people gave themselves over to open indulgence — immediate pleasure, since life was so uncertain. They spent money recklessly, broke laws without fear of punishment, because death was coming anyway. It's a stark portrait of civilization peeling away. Lucas: The plague hit Athens in waves. The first lasted about two years, 430 to 429. A second wave came in 427. All told, perhaps a third of the population died. And among the dead was Pericles himself, in 429. Luna: So the man who had given that soaring Funeral Oration the year before, honoring the war dead, died of plague. Lucas: The irony is crushing. Pericles gave that speech in the winter of 431/430, after the first year of war. He praised Athens' greatness and the nobility of dying for the city. Less than a year later, he was a victim of the plague. Thucydides records his last speech, where he defends his leadership and warns Athenians not to do something reckless — but they fined him anyway, briefly. Luna: What happened to Athens after Pericles died? Lucas: Without him, the assembly became more volatile. Leaders like Cleon — whom we've talked about in episode 98 — rose to prominence. Cleon was more aggressive, more populist. The cautious strategy Pericles had advocated, avoiding land battles and relying on the navy and the walls, was abandoned. The war dragged on for another 25 years, ending in Athens' defeat. Lucas: Some historians argue that the plague was the turning point. It killed not just Pericles but thousands of experienced soldiers, rowers, and citizens. The loss of manpower and morale was crippling. And the moral shock — the sense that the gods had abandoned them — never fully healed. Luna: It's strange to think how much hinged on a disease that no one understood. Lucas: Absolutely. And the medical legacy is interesting too. Later writers, like the Hippocratic doctors, tried to explain it, but the cause is still debated. Theories range from typhoid fever to Ebola to bubonic plague, but no one's sure. Thucydides' description is so detailed that modern epidemiologists still study it. Lucas: Speaking of things that endure — if you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, you might have noticed we don't run ads. That's by design, and it's only possible because listeners who find value in these conversations sometimes toss a coffee our way. If today's episode was worth a coffee to you, that's the link — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, it's a small way to keep this going without any of the ad breaks. Appreciate it. Lucas: Anyway, back to the plague. One thing that stuck with me from Thucydides is the way he says people stopped caring about honor or shame. He writes that no one expected to live long enough to face legal consequences, so they just did whatever they wanted. That's a kind of societal death before the physical one. Luna: It makes you wonder how Athens recovered enough to build things like the Erechtheion later in the war. Lucas: That's the remarkable part. Despite the plague, the war, the political chaos, Athens kept building, kept debating, kept creating. The Erechtheion was constructed between 421 and 406, right in the middle of the war. There was resilience, even after Pericles and so many others were gone. Luna: So the plague didn't just kill people — it killed a certain trust in the world. Lucas: That's exactly it. And Thucydides, by writing it all down with such precision, gave us a window into how fragile civilization can be. His account isn't just history; it's a meditation on human nature under extreme stress.