The Asclepion
Prof. Nancy Demand, Indiana University
- Bloomington
The Plague in Athens during the Peloponnesian
War
Historical Background to Thucydides'
Description of the Plague
In the early fifth century, the Greeks,
apparently against all odds, managed to defeat the numerically
far superior forces of the expansive Persian empire in two invasions,
in 490 BCE (the battle of Marathon), and again in 480 BCE.
This sobering experience led a number of Greek cities to join
together with Athens in a sea league for the dual purpose of
punishing the hubris of the Persians and gaining some recompense
for the destruction's of the war. Over time, however, Athens
turned this league into an instrument of its own imperial power,
enforcing its will upon its allies, now become subjects, and
openly appropriating the funds of the league for the creation
of monuments of imperial splendor (notably, the Parthenon).
This naturally provided a focal point for the jealousies and
rivalries of the various Greek poleis, and especially for the
Spartans, the acknowledged masters of infantry (hoplite) warfare.
The result was an extended war, lasting from 431 to 404 BCE,
that pitted the hoplite forces of the Peloponnesus, Sparta and
its allies, against the maritime superiority of Athens and its
allies.
Thucydides is our primary source for this war. He was an
upper-class Athenian and lived through the war (or nearly though
it -- it is unclear when he died, but he left his work unfinished).
While serving as general he was exiled for coming late to an
engagement, and as a result he spent much of the war in exile
in the northern Aegean where his family had land -- the same
territory in which the doctors who composed the Epidemics were
traveling. He was highly aware of the intellectual currents
of the time, and both medicine and rhetoric have influenced his
presentation of the war.
According to Thucydides, at first enthusiasm for the war was
high. Large numbers of young men on both sides who had no
experience of war saw it as an adventure and a potential source
of profit. But even the first year of the war brought losses
and hardship to the Athenians, much of it caused by the radical
strategy advocated by the Athenians' current political leader,
Pericles, to rely mainly on Athenian naval supremacy: bring all
the people in Attica into the city and abandon the outlying countryside
to destruction by the Spartans, relying upon the navy to supply
the city with food and other necessities that would be carried
through the fortified corridor from the port of the Pireus into
the city itself (the Long Walls).
In the winter following the first year of the war, morale
had fallen considerably in Athens. It was at the year's
public funeral (held annually for men who had fallen in battle
in the course of the year) that Pericles pronounced the famous
funeral oration that is so often quoted as summing up the greatness
of Periclean Athens (Thuc.2.34-46). Pericles' speech was
an encomium on Athenian democracy and it provided the high point
of Thucydides' account of the war. It is immediately and
dramatically followed in his account by the description of the
plague which struck the city in the following summer, as the
Spartans again invaded Attica. Crowded together in the
city as the result of Pericles' strategy, the Athenians fell
victim to the virulent sickness that was spreading throughout
the eastern Mediterranean. People died in large numbers,
and no preventive measures or remedies were of any avail.
It has been estimated that a quarter, and perhaps even a third,
of the population was lost. The plague returned twice more,
in 429 and 427/6, and Pericles himself died during this time,
probably as a result of the disease.
By 415 the military rolls were full again (Thuc. 6.26),
but the thirty-plus generation that filled offices and provided
leadership had not yet been replenished.
Thucydides' himself suffered from the plague and recovered; thus
he was an eyewitness to the catastrophe (might this have affected
his reportage of it?). His expressed intention was not
to suggest causes or to identify the illness, but to provide
as complete and accurate a description as possible so that the
illness could be recognized should it ever recur in the future
(in this he showed the influence of the Hippocratic emphasis
on prognosis). But the reader cannot be unaware of the
dramatic contrast to the idealism that had just been expressed
in the Funeral Oration. Thucydides lived in an era in which rhetoric
was a highly praised and widely practiced skill, and its effect
on his work can often be noticed. Unfortunately, none of
our other sources mentions the outbreak, and we cannot confirm
his account directly. While it is true that the lack of
other notices in literature or archaeological evidence such as
mass graves is somewhat puzzling, nevertheless, Thucydides was
writing for an audience that included many who had lived through
the events themselves, so that we cannot suspect outright invention
on his part.
How does Thucydides' Present the
Plague?
READ Thucydides' account of the plague (Thuc. 2.47-55). The simplest
analysis is one in terms of symptoms: What specific symptoms
does Thucydides' describe? In what terms does he describe
them (lay terms, or Hippocratic terms?)? How useful do
you think his descriptions would be to a modern doctor, and why?
A second type of analysis should take into account epidemiological
factors (who was most heavily stricken? were there any differences
according to age, gender? were animals affected? how long did
the attack last and did it recur?)
Is Retrodiagnosis Possible? What was the Plague?
Ironically, despite Thucydides' detailed description, modern
scholars are still not able to agree on the identity of the disease.
It was clearly not the bubonic plague of the Black Death in the
14th century, for the characteristic symptom of the bubo is not
found in Thucydides' description. Other candidates that
have been suggested are measles, typhus, ergotism, and even toxic
shock syndrome as a complication of influenza. The case for typhus
seems strongest both epidemiologically -- the age group is similar
-- and from the standpoint of the symptoms. Typhus is characterized
by fever and a rash, gangrene of the extremities occurs, it is
known as a "doctors' disease" from its frequent incidence
among care-givers, it confers immunity, and patients during a
typhus epidemic in the First World War were reported to have
jumped into water tanks to alleviate extreme thirst. But
the fit is not exact. The rash is difficult to identify
on the basis of Thucydides' description (modern medical texts
often employ pictures to differentiate rashes), and the state
of mental confusion may not fit Thucydides' description.
In the long run, all such attempts at identification may be futile,
however. Diseases develop and change over time, and it
may be, as A.J.Holladay and J.C.F.Poole argue (Classical Quarterly
29 (1979) 299ff.), that the plague of the 5th century no longer
exists today in a recognizable form. In the course of their argument
they provide a full bibliography for the various candidates up
to that time. New suggestions continue to be made: toxic
shock complicated by influenze: A.D.Langmuir, et al, "The
Thucydides Syndrome," New England Journal of Medicine
(1985) 1027-30; Marburg-Ebolu fevers: G.D.Scarrow, "The
Athenian Plague. A possible diagnosis," Ancient History
Bulletin 11 (1988) 4-8. Holladay and Poole credit Thucydides
for first recognizing the factor of contagion; for another view
on this issue, see J.Solomon, "Thucydides and the recognition
of contagion," Maia 37 (1985) 121ff.; on the intellectual
effects of the plague, see J.Mikalson, "Religion and the
plague in Athens 431-427 BC," Greek, Roman and Byzantine
Studies 10 (1982) 217ff.
Thucydides' emphasis on the social and moral effects of the Athenian
plague may be augmented by studies of the effects of the Black
Death in Europe (for example, Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence
and Siena after the Black Death, 1978). Perhaps a third
of the population died, and a large number of these were sudden
and untimely deaths, occurring indifferently to those of both
good and bad character. Appeals to the gods were fruitless.
Normal expectations were upset as distant relatives of the wealthy
suddenly found themselves the possessors of unexpected fortunes,
and the normal pool of aristocratic candidates for political
office was swept away. (For example, both of Pericles'
legitimate sons died, and he made a special plea to set aside
the citizenship law, which he himself had sponsored in 451, so
that his son by the Milesian Aspasia could be declared a citizen.)
