Thucydides : History of the Peloponnesian War

He argued that these events were due to the forces of nature and it was rather manifested in destiny, and physical reality, the plague was NOT the work of God or some higher force, rather grounded in reason, fate, and reality. He began what is known as a historiographical accounting of history and past events, a different style to his more religious predecessors. However, thucydides’ model of accounting past events would soon become a model used by new historians

Marking a change, past historians before Thucydides accounted for the cause of such mass scale plagues to be due to the wrath of religion or gods. This can be seen in famous ancient greek works such as Iliad of Homer and Herodotus, a greek historian who accounted for the Greco-Persian wars as the wrath of god. Personal accounts of the plague were made by Thucydides, since he suffered from it himself: provided more systematic observations. Some of which include headaches, painful rashes, Conjuntivitis, fever. Victims had diarrhea, unquenchable thirst, and coughed up blood. He described it as “ineffectual retching.” The uncontrollable diarrhea was often the leading factor prior to death. He described the unquenchable thirst as so bad that athenians often through themselves into wells, and most survived only seven to eight days and sometimes lifelong blindness or paralysis if they survived.He outlined social consequences of the plague, most caregivers and doctors during the war caught the disease that was transmitted through their patients.Mass sense of despair turned religion into anarchy, as people were led down a path of self harm and mass indulgence and utter indifference to laws. Even in funerals, Thucydides observed that very rarely people followed custom and suit to traditional funeral rites. This was a mass fall of religion, civic duty, and superstition reigned high, rather opposed to traditional religion. Many greek philosophers and athenians including Lucretius hailed back to Epicurus, and his works on Platonic ideas and transcendent entities, stating that belief in gods was futile and religion had no place in society. On his origins of the Plague, he states that it first originated in Ethiopia, then got transmitted via Persia in the second war that last in that year. Around 430 BCE. The plague then arrived in Athens in the second siege by Sparta, struck the port city of Piraeus. This caused initial suspicion that their enemies had poisoned the water supply. The second time the disease struck in 429 was when it killed Pericles. Thucydides also observed that the plague hit the refugees coming into Athens harder because they were living in unsanitary and cramped conditions. This plague decimated a lot of the military and army, and they needed the army the most in a time of war. Thucydides and his overall account of the plague in respects to politics and society as a whole shared commonalities with other ancient plague descriptions, themes of dissolution of family values, rebellious nature of women and minority groups, and distaste of government and religion. However the main difference in respect to the Plague of Athens when compared to other plagues is that in the Plague of Athens, invaders and Spartans were blamed for poisoning water and starting the plague, but in other plagues minority and suppressed groups were the primary scapegoats. Density in countryside was a lot less, but closer to city walls was populated by refugees, skyrocketing the population density to 100,000 per square mile

Athenians however seemed to be more aware of the overcrowding and how overcrowding exacerbates the plague, because they sometimes imposed strict quarantines

They moved their cattle to Euboea, a remote location away from the people to preserve food supply. Thucydides is faced with a strong nationalistic paradox : he constantly praises Athens as the richest and most grandeur/civilized city state, but they suffered the most from the plague and took a hard hit Athens compared to other city states were more accepting of aliens/metics, which proved to be detrimental because letting refugees in just worsened spread rates

Very few metics resided in Sparta, because they were not the fondest of immigration

Since Athens had a large number of Metics and was open to foreign trade, along with the increased spread of the Plague, Athenians were afraid of losing the nationality

The plague changed the demographics of Athenian society, and tougher restrictions on Metics were changed, but nativism and hate was still perpetuated towards Metics

Laws were enacted only in the 450s prohibiting Metics from entering Athenian society , after the war ended in 403 was this law finally reenacted. The expected long term reaction of Athenian citizenry along with Thucydides was that Athens would be more accepting of high ranked Metics and allow the more industrious into their ranks/society. They needed more high status members in and other Metrics to regain the population numbers, as Thucydides estimated 15 years to recover, but the laws passed made it difficult. Most of the general population however was far more concerned about preserving traditional athenian citizenry, rather than opening up their society for Metics of higher rank and traditional metics/refugees. They felt that even though Sparta had a sharp population decline by not opening up their walls to outsiders, they still won the war and were a great influence to Athenians.

In addition to facing cramped conditions, many of the people coming into Athens had poor diets and were agricultural slaves, which further weakened their immune systems

Although Thucydides was an upper class Aristocrat and posed little to no interest in the lower classes, he did note that no class fully escaped the plague, but lower classes were by far the hardest hit