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The Catastrophic Plague in Athens (430 BCE-426 BCE): Causes, Consequences and Correspondences with COVID-19
Many of us are very aware of the epidemics that have swept through the 20th and 21st centuries which include the Spanish Flu in 1918 that killed over 50 million people worldwide. Many of us will know of the bubonic plague that erupted into Europe during the Middle Ages forever immortalised in that vivid, vile description as The Black Death. But few I suspect have heard of the plague that killed a quarter of the Athenian population in just under 5 years in the 5th century BCE. The city-state of Athens was at the time engaged in The Peloponnesian War with its rival for the hegemony of Greece, the city-state of Sparta.
These two proud peoples had once been allies against the might of the Persian Empire which itself wanted dominion over these and all other independent states. In the war of liberation that united these ancient defenders of freedom did in its successful outcome, at immense cost and great heroic sacrifice, preserve the very idea of freedom in the classical world and freedom for the world, as Churchill so eloquently opined in another era threatened by another despotic regime.
Athens in 430 BCE was under siege from Sparta and had been bringing people inside the city from the surrounding area to secure their safety. The Athenian…
