The Plague of Athens
An epidemic kills a third of a besieged city, and a historian catches it and survives to describe it.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 4 years
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Classical, Holocene
In 430 BCE, with the population crowded inside the walls, an epidemic strikes Athens and kills perhaps 75,000 to 100,000 people including Pericles. Thucydides had it himself and describes the symptoms and progression precisely, explicitly so that it could be recognised if it returned — and notes the collapse of law and religious observance as people concluded that neither piety nor crime affected the outcome. The pathogen remains unidentified; typhoid is one candidate from DNA in a mass grave.