When one pictures a Greek city-state, one pictures a beautiful city with a great leader to guide it, to give it courage in battle, and most importantly, to give its people hope. This Greek city-state was Athens, and this great leader was Pericles. Born in Athens in 495 B.C.E., Pericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of the very powerful Athens.¹ Pericles was a strong believer in the arts, literature, and philosophy. He was responsible for the full development of the Athenian democracy that shaped Athens’ politics and culture.² Although Athens was enjoying a golden age while led by Pericles, this soon came to an end and thus began the fall of Athens.

That fall began in 431 B.C.E. when the 27 year long Peloponnesian War began. This long and bloody war was between the two most dominant Greek city-states, Athens and Sparta, along with each side’s allies. The war began when conflicts arose after the Greco-Persian Wars. Both Athens and Sparta longed for dominance, and in May of 431 B.C.E., war broke out between them. Pericles knew Athens’ strength was in their navy, so his strategy was to avoid Sparta on land, because he knew that on land, Athens would be no match for Sparta. What he failed to realize, however, is that crowding the population of Athens behind its Long Walls would be deadly if disease ever broke out in Athens while Sparta had it besieged.

In an attempt to please his people and praise those who had fallen in the war, Pericles gave a funeral oration in which he spoke highly of those who had given their lives for the democracy. In his speech, he tried to regain the peoples’ trust and remind them of the many victories they had had that were led by him. Pericles’ praised the Athenian people and spoke of how proud he was of them and how far they had gotten thus far. He gave Athens the title of being a model for the other surrounding Greek city-states because Athens showed its dominance. He also went on to compare Athens to Sparta. Sparta focused only on their strong and strict military whereas Athens focused on its city and the helping of each other as one in times of need, which only makes them stronger because they are “just as brave” as Pericles states.³

After cruising around Peloponnese as Pericles had ordered, he arrived in Attica where the plague began to appear among the Athenians. Sickness spread fast and there was nothing the Athenians could do to stop it. Physicians became infected and died much faster than other people because they were exposed to the sick more often. Not many survived this plague, but Thucydides, a general and historian of Athens, lived after having contracted the plague and lived to tell the tale of the Peloponnesian War. His history of this war is contained in The History of the Peloponnesian War. In this book, he writes of the chronological order of the war and the downfall of Athens due to the plague. Thucydides writes that while the Peloponnesians invaded Attica, the Athenians left and fled to their ships. Countless Athenian people were dying in battle and from the plague. The Peloponnesians feared the disease and watched as burials went on, but remained about forty days in Attica ravaging through the town.⁴

After the second invasion of Athens by the Peloponnesians, the Athenians began putting more blame on Pericles for declaring and leading a war that brought great suffering to the people of Athens. They began blaming Pericles for the death of one-quarter of its population. After about two years, the great general and leader of Athens was no longer wanted and was not selected to continue being their general the following year.⁵ What no one knew, however, and what is still a debate to this day, is what the plague really was. No one knows what disease or diseases were responsible for this plague. There have been ongoing studies to find what diseases could have possibly been the cause of the numerous deaths. Although some results have been discovered, there is no clear answer to the ongoing question: what was the infamous death that killed a third of the population of Athenians? The most common and most discussed diseases among scholars for the most reasonable explanations for the plague include: bubonic plague, influenza, typhoid fever, smallpox, epidemic typhus, and measles.⁶ Any of these diseases could be the cause of the plague, but there is not enough microbiologic evidence to pinpoint which disease or diseases specifically were the cause of the Athenian plague. This lack of evidence is the reason for the constant disagreement between scholars.

The plague, along with the battles fought during the war, killed a great portion of the people of Athens, and as the Athenians became weaker and weaker, they received even worse news. Pericles contracted the plague, and unlike Thucydides, he did not recover and in fact died in 429 B.C.E. leaving Athens without a general, and to fend for themselves. After his death, the government of Athens became unstable and was not able to get organized in order to continue fighting the war. With the constant invasions, people still dying from the plague, and the death of Pericles, the Athenians continued fighting until a decade and a half later, they surrendered. By the time the Peloponnesian War ended in 404 B.C.E., Athens had fallen leaving Greece weak and fractured. The fall of Athens set off chain reaction for the fall of Sparta, then eventually, the end of Classical Greece.