Latest / Ancient Greece: Philosophy, Democracy, and Endless War — Fexingo History / The Plague of Athens: How Disease Defeated the City of Pericles
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Athenian democracy, about the great speeches, the battles, the philosophical schools. But one thing that doesn't get enough attention — and it arguably changed the course of the Peloponnesian War more than any single battle — is the plague that hit Athens in 430 BCE. Luna: Right, the one that killed Pericles. But I don't know much beyond that. Lucas: Exactly. And honestly, if today's episode was worth a coffee to you, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's it — no pressure, just a way to keep these conversations ad-free. Anyway, back to the plague. Thucydides, who lived through it and survived, gives us the most detailed account. He says it started in Ethiopia, then moved through Egypt and the Persian Empire before hitting Athens. Luna: So it was a trade route disease, essentially. Lucas: Probably. Athens was a massive port, and Piraeus was crowded with ships from all over the Mediterranean. And what made it catastrophic was that Pericles had just ordered the entire population of Attica — farmers, villagers, everyone — to move inside the city walls while Spartan armies ravaged the countryside. So Athens became a refugee camp, packed with people, poor sanitation, and water supplies that were likely contaminated. Lucas: Thucydides describes the symptoms in horrifying detail: fever, redness and inflammation of the eyes, throat and tongue bleeding, a foul breath, sneezing, hoarseness, then violent coughing, vomiting, and finally diarrhea. Many developed a rash with small pustules. They were tormented by thirst, couldn't sleep, and even survivors often lost their fingers or toes or eyesight. And the dead just piled up. Luna: And he says the doctors couldn't do anything because they caught it and died themselves. Lucas: Right. That's one of the most chilling parts: the medical art was helpless. Even the oracles and prayers to the gods didn't help. The temples were full of suppliants, then full of corpses. Thucydides says people stopped fearing the gods because they saw the pious and the impious dying alike. Law and order broke down. People said, 'What's the point? Let's enjoy life while we can.' There was open lawlessness — theft, spending recklessly, ignoring burial customs. Luna: That's the kind of social collapse you usually only see in fiction. Lucas: And it had direct military consequences. The Athenians had to abandon their siege of Potidaea because the plague was ravaging their camp. Pericles himself caught it — he died in 429 BCE, after a long illness. Thucydides says he was a victim of the plague, though some modern scholars think he may have died of something else, maybe a lingering complication. But with Pericles gone, Athens lost its most steady leader. Lucas: After him, demagogues like Cleon took over — the man who later proposed slaughtering all the men of Mytilene, which we talked about in that earlier episode. The plague devastated the Athenian population, maybe killing 25 to 30 percent of the people. It hit the poor hardest because they lived in crowded slums, but the rich didn't escape either. It returned in 427 BCE and again in 426 BCE, though less severely. Luna: So this is why Sparta didn't win quickly — because Athens was already shattered from within. Lucas: It's ironic: the Spartans didn't even have to fight. They just stayed outside the walls while the plague did their work. And it also affected the Spartans, actually — Thucydides mentions that the plague didn't hit the Peloponnese as hard, but it did reach some areas. But the real tragedy is that if not for the plague, Athens might have won the war. They had the navy, the money, the walls. But you can't fight a war when a third of your citizens are dead. Luna: What do modern scientists think it actually was? Lucas: That's a great question, and there's no consensus. For a long time, people thought it was bubonic plague — like the Black Death — but Thucydides describes pustules on the skin, not buboes in the armpits and groin. In the 1990s, some researchers proposed typhus: the symptoms match pretty well, and typhus is spread by lice, which would thrive in crowded, unsanitary conditions. But typhus usually doesn't cause the kind of eye inflammation and loss of extremities that Thucydides mentions. Lucas: Other candidates: smallpox — it can cause pustules and high fever. But smallpox has a distinctive rash progression that doesn't quite match. More recently, some have suggested Ebola or a similar hemorrhagic fever, because of the bleeding from the mouth and eyes. But Ebola is rare in outbreaks that size and spreads differently. A 2006 study analyzed ancient teeth from a mass grave in Athens and found DNA from typhoid fever, but that's not definitive. The truth is we may never know. Luna: So it's a medical mystery wrapped in a historical disaster. Lucas: Exactly. And what's amazing is how much we owe to Thucydides. He's our only detailed source, and he wrote it with clinical precision. He even says he had the disease himself and watched others suffer. His description is so vivid that doctors still study it. He's often called the father of scientific history, and this plague account is a big reason why. Lucas: One last thing: the plague didn't just kill people. It killed Athenian confidence. Before, Athens was bold, innovative, confident in its democracy and its gods. After the plague, there was a kind of despair. You see it in the plays of Euripides from that period — they're darker, more cynical. And the war dragged on for another 25 years, but Athens never fully recovered its population or its spirit. Luna: So in a way, the plague was the real turning point in the Peloponnesian War, not any battle. Lucas: I think that's exactly right. It's the invisible catastrophe that changed everything. Luna: And it makes you wonder how many other times in history disease has decided the outcome of wars, and we just don't hear about it. Lucas: Absolutely. The Spanish flu in World War I, the typhus that ravaged Napoleon's army in Russia, the smallpox that Cortés brought to the Aztecs. Disease is often the silent strategist. But the Athenian plague is one of the earliest well-documented examples, and it's a sobering reminder of how fragile civilization can be. Lucas: Well, that's our show for today. If you want to dig deeper, I recommend Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 2, chapters 47–54. It's a short but powerful read. And as always, thanks for spending part of your day with us.