The Plague of Athens

Early in the summer of 430 BCE, the second year of the war with Sparta, a Peloponnesian army under the Spartan king Archidamus invaded Attica. Within days a disease broke out in Athens on a scale nobody could remember. It struck first at the port of Piraeus, where people said the Peloponnesians had poisoned the reservoirs, and then moved into the upper city. Thucydides, who caught it himself and recovered, wrote down its course so that it could be recognized if it ever came back.

In people who had been healthy it began with heat in the head and red, inflamed eyes; the throat and tongue turned bloody and the breath foul. Sneezing, hoarseness and a hard cough followed, then vomiting of bile and violent retching. The skin, reddish and livid, broke out in small blisters and ulcers, and the sick burned so inwardly that they could not bear even light clothing; some who had been left alone threw themselves into rain tanks, tormented by thirst. Most died on the seventh or eighth day. Survivors could lose fingers, toes, genitals or eyes, and some lost their memory.

Physicians died fastest, because they visited the sick most, and prayers at the temples did no good. Those who nursed friends caught the disease and died, and whole houses emptied for want of anyone to care for the sick. Refugees from the countryside, lodged in stifling huts in the hot season, died in heaps, bodies filled the sacred places and burial customs broke down. Thucydides also recorded that no one who recovered was attacked a second time, at least not fatally, so survivors could tend the sick without fear.

The epidemic ran from 430 to 427 or 425 BCE. Its cause is still unknown. A 1996 letter in Emerging Infectious Diseases counted 29 or more earlier theories, added Ebola to the list, and suggested testing skeletons from the period for traces of the pathogen.