The Athenian Plague
By Markus Asper
Published Online, 2008
Introduction: During the years 430-426/5 BCE, a plague afflicted the city of Athens. At that time, Athens had just entered upon a three-decade war with her arch-enemy, Sparta, and her allies. Because of Spartan invasions, the rural population of Attica had taken refuge behind the city-walls of Athens. The city was, therefore, crowded and the refugees lived cramped together under unhealthy conditions. Perhaps this is one of the reasons this plague became so memorable: a great number of people died, approximately a third of the citizens. For demographic reasons, the plague played a ―more than temporal, but less than causal‖ part in the final defeat of Athens.1 We know about all this—and this is another reason the plague is so memorable—because we have a contemporary description of this plague by Thucydides, the famous historian. He very soon became the undisputed historical (and literary) authority for this time and the entire war. His fascinating description of the devastating plague became a classic in itself towards which, in the ancient and medieval world, everybody looked who intended to write about a plague in other than purely medical terms. There is a down-side to this, obviously: no independent evidence exists for the plague, especially nothing non-textual. That is why thinking about this plague poses some interesting problems.
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