Plague of Athens

Epidemic

Date: 430-427 b.c.e.

Place: Athens, Greece

Result: About 30,000 dead

As the early battles of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 b.c.e.) were being waged between the ancient Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta, urban crowding in several major cities reached an unprecedented level. Perhaps the worst of these overpopulated centers was Athens itself. It had been the strategy of the Athenian general and statesman Pericles to protect the entire populace of Attica, the region in which Athens is located, by permitting any resident of this area who wished to do so to take refuge within the Athenian city walls. While this policy won much support because it protected most of the citizenry from Spartan raids, it also caused such intense crowding within central Athens that the city became vulnerable to the swift spread of disease.

The plague that befell Athens in 430 b.c.e. was first observed in Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya, and the island of Lemnos. Scholars assume that it was carried to Athens aboard ship, a theory given credence by the illness’s first arrival in mainland Europe at Piraeus, the port of Athens. Because a state of war then existed between Athens and Sparta, initial suspicions fell upon the Spartans. They were accused of poisoning the Athenian watersupply in an attempt to win through deceit victories that they could not win on the battlefield. Nevertheless, as the disease spread, ultimately killing as many as a quarter to a third of the entire Athenian population, it became apparent that the cause of the disaster was not an enemy conspiracy but a new form of contagion that had a natural (or, as some thought, a divine) origin.

Symptoms of the Athenian Plague. The symptoms of the Athenian plague have been detailed with far greater precision than those of any other ancient epidemic because the Greek historian Thucydides (c. 459-c. 402 b.c.e.) provided a full account of it in his history of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides himself had suffered from the plague, but, like a number of other fortunate individuals, he survived. The description that Thucydides provided of the plague includes little speculation as to its cause but extensive analysis of its symptoms. Thucydides relates that he provided this information in the hope that future generations would recognize later outbreaks of the disease and understand its prognosis. By taking this approach, Thucydides revealed that he was under the influence of the “father of Greek medicine,” Hippocrates of Cos (c. 460-c. 370 b.c.e.), then at the height of his prestige among the Athenian intelligentsia. Hippocrates, too, had stressed diagnosis and prognosis over vain attempts to find cures.

Thucydides notes that the onset of the plague was sudden. During a year that had otherwise been remarkably free of other illnesses, apparently healthy people would unexpectedly develop a high fever. Inflammation of the eyes, throat, and tongue soon followed, turning the victim’s breath extremely foul. Several of the plague’s initial symptoms resembled those of a severe cold. Patients suffered from sneezing, hoarseness, and coughs. The standard treatments of these symptoms had, however, little effect upon the rapid progress of the plague.

In its second stage, the plague moved from victims’ heads to their stomachs. Vomiting and great pain were followed by dry heaves (or, some scholars believe, violent hiccups) and prolonged spasms. Then, as the fever began to subside, the patient’s skin turned sensitive. Many victims found that they could not tolerate being touched in any way or even being covered by either clothing or blankets. The patient’s skin turned deep red or black-and-blue in spots, with sores breaking out over large areas of the body. Sleep proved to be impossible, both from the pain of the illness and from a general restlessness. Unquenchable thirst caused many victims to throw themselves into public rain basins in their desire to drink as much water as possible.

By this stage in the illness, seven or eight days had elapsed; many of the plague’s victims died at this point. Those who survived the plague’s initial ravages, however, quickly developed severe diarrhea. The general weakness that resulted from sustained dysentery then caused additional deaths among the very young and very old. Those in the prime of life, however, might begin to regain their health at this point. The severe fevers caused some victims to develop amnesia. Others became blind or lost the use of their extremities.

As the plague lingered in Athens, it increasingly took its toll upon those with weakened immune systems. Thucydides notes that, as the winter continued, nearly any disease that an individual developed eventually turned into the plague. Victims also remained contagious after they died. Thucydides reports that animals did not feed on the corpses of plague victims or, if they did, they died soon after. Human patients who survived appeared to be immune to further attacks of plague. Several of those who repeatedly developed plague symptoms found that subsequent infections were increasingly less severe. In their elation at their restored health, many former victims imagined that they were now immune to illness of any kind. As evidence emerged that this was not true, however, a number of these survivors were plunged into a deep depression.

Subsequent History of the Plague. One unanticipated outcome of the Athenian plague was the emergence of an almost citywide sense of fatalism. The sudden, indiscriminate death caused by the plague suggested to many individuals that no human action or remedy was useful. Victims died regardless of whether they were ignored or well treated by physicians. Death occurred without respect for a victim’s character or individual piety. Diet, exercise, and a person’s general state of health had little bearing on the rapid progress of the disease. What was worse in the eyes of many was that the merciful appeared to be dying in even greater numbers than the callous. Compassionate individuals were more likely to treat others suffering from the disease and thus were more likely to be exposed to it themselves. As a result, many Athenians felt that all the virtues they had once cherished—piety, fitness, civic-mindedness, integrity—were of little practical value. In a matter of days, the plague did more to harden the hearts of many Athenians than did all the months of the war against Sparta.

The public disorder caused by the plague, combined with the psychic trauma resulting from daily exposure to victims dying or in intense agony, produced a state of chaos throughout Athens. The law provided no deterrent to citizens who imagined that they would die soon anyway. Crimes of all sorts began to increase. People ceased planning for the future, preferring to direct their efforts toward the satisfaction of immediate pleasures. The worship of the gods declined because many people felt that religion provided no guarantee of health. Even the literature and art of the city was affected by the plague. The god Apollo, until then regarded as a source of inspiration and light in Athenian literature, took on an increasingly negative image in many works, including the tragedies of the playwright Euripides (c. 485-406 b.c.e.). Apollo’s oracle at Delphi had promised aid to the Spartans, and, as the Athenians remembered well, Apollo was the god of plagues in Homer’s Iliad (c. 800 b.c.e.).

When, in the spring of 429 b.c.e., the Spartans again invaded Attica and once more laid waste to the fields, public opinion began to turn against Pericles. The Athenians claimed it was his fault that no crops could be planted for two years and that the city was sufficiently crowded to spread the plague. In part, at least, these criticisms were justified. It had been Pericles’ policy to protect behind the city’s walls thousands of Athenian citizens who ordinarily would have remained unaffected by the plague in the countryside. As an urban phenomenon, the plague was largely confined to Athens itself and a few other large cities. It did not enter the Peloponnisos, sparing Sparta, a less-populated city than Athens.

Pericles was removed from office as general of Athens. Two of his own sons died in the plague. History, perhaps unreliably, reports that his mistress Aspasia and two of his friends, the philosopher Protagoras and the sculptor Phidias, were placed on trial by the Athenians in an effort to discredit Pericles. Pericles himself was fined for misuse of public funds. Soon, however, public opinion shifted yet again, and Pericles was restored to public office. Nevertheless, by this time, his health was in decline. Calling the plague “the one thing that I did not foresee,” Pericles became its most prominent victim. He died in 429 b.c.e. After its initial outbreak in 430 and 429, the plague returned to claim more victims in 427 b.c.e.

In 1994, a mass grave dating to the fifth and fourth centuries b.c.e. was discovered as preparations were being made for a subway station near the ancient Kerameikos cemetery in Athens. Numerous bodies were uncovered, hastily thrown into multiple shafts. One shaft alone contained more than 90 skeletons, 10 of which belonged to children. Because of the date of the burial and the cursory manner in which the interment appeared to have been carried out, many scholars speculated that the site might have been associated with the great Plague of Athens. In his account of the plague, Thucydides had mentioned that the sheer number of casualties had necessitated swift burial in mass graves. Although the date and general location of the burial are appropriate for the Plague of Athens, final identification will never be possible because the site was destroyed as construction continued.

Precise Causes of the Athenian Plague. Historians and epidemiologists cannot agree as to the precise nature of the organism responsible for the Athenian plague. Some scholars believe that the illness was either identical or closely related to various illnesses known in the modern world. Others believe that, because of the rapid evolution of microbes, it was a unique contagion having no parallel in contemporary society. Candidates put forward as possible causes of the Athenian plague have included the Ebola virus, influenza, measles, typhus, ergotism (a disease caused by the ingestion of contaminated grain products), and toxic shock syndrome. The latter two of these possibilities seem unlikely because they would not have been spread in the highly contagious manner attributed to the Athenian plague. The other candidates for the disease all lack at least one of the major symptoms described by Thucydides. Although the precise nature of the Athenian plague will probably never be determined, one thing remains clear: The cause of this disease cannot be identified with that of another famous plague, the Black Death that ravaged Europe during the fourteenth century. Nowhere in Thucydides’ account is there any mention of the buboes, those enlarged lymph nodes in the groin or armpits that gave the bubonic plague its name. In the history of epidemics, the Plague of Athens appears to remain unique.

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