The Athenian Plague: How Disease Destroyed Pericles' Golden Age

The History of Greece: Philosophy, Empire, and Endless Reinvention — Fexingo History · Jun 9, 2026 · 6m · transcript

In 430 BC, as Athens was in the second year of the Peloponnesian War, a mysterious plague swept through the city crowded behind its Long Walls. Over the next three years, it killed perhaps a third of the population, including the great statesman Pericles. Thucydides, who survived and documented the outbreak with clinical precision, provides our most detailed ancient account. This episode examines what the plague was — likely typhoid fever or typhus — how it spread in the besieged city, its symptoms as described by Thucydides, and its devastating social consequences: the breakdown of law…