The Plague At Athens

During the period after the Persian war two great powers arose in

Greece, which were destined to come into close and virulent conflict.

These were the league of Delos, which developed into the empire of

Athens, and the Peloponnesian confederacy, under the leadership of

Sparta. The first of these was mainly an island empire, the second a

mainland league; the first a group of democratic, the second one of

aristocratic, s ates; the first a power with dominion over the seas, the

second a power whose strength lay in its army. Such were the two rival

confederacies into which Greece gradually divided, and between which

hostile sentiment grew stronger year after year.



It became apparent as the years went on that a struggle was coming for

supremacy in Greece. Outbreaks of active hostility between the rival

powers from time to time took place. At length the situation grew so

strained that a general conflict began, that devastating Peloponnesian

war which for nearly thirty years desolated Greece, and which ended in

the ruin of Athens, the home of poetry and art, and the supremacy of

Sparta, the native school of war. The first great conflict of the

Hellenic people, the Persian war, had made Greece powerful and

glorious. The second great conflict, the Peloponnesian war, brought

Greece to the verge of ruin, and destroyed that Athenian supremacy in

which lay the true path of progress for that fair land.



In 431 B.C. the war broke out. Sparta and her allies declared war

against Athens on the ground that that city was growing too great and

grasping, and an army marched from the Peloponnesus northward to invade

the Attic state. Meanwhile the Athenians, under the shrewd advice of

Pericles, adopted a wise policy. It was with her fleet that Athens had

defeated Persia, and her wise statesman advised that she should devote

herself to the dominion of the sea, and leave to Sparta that of the

land. Their walls would protect her people, their ships would bring them

food from afar, they were not a fair match for Sparta on land, and could

safely leave to that city of warriors the temporary dominion of Attic

soil.



This advice was taken. When the Spartan army came near Attica all its

people left their fields and homes and sought refuge, as once before,

within the walls of their capacious capital city. Over the Attic plain

marched the invaders, destroying the summer crops, burning the farmers'

homesteads, yet recoiling in helpless rage before those strong walls

behind which lay the whole population of the state. From the city, as we

know, long and high walls stretched away to the sea and invested the

seaport town of Piraeus, within whose harbor lay the powerful Athenian

fleet. And in the treasury of the city rested an abundant supply of

money,--the sinews of war,--with whose aid food and supplies could be

brought from over the seas. In vain, then, did Sparta ravage the fields

of Attica. The people of that desolated realm defied them from behind

their city walls.



When winter came the invaders retired and the farmers went back to their

fields. In the spring they ploughed and sowed as of yore, and watched in

hope the growing crops. But with the summer the Spartans came again, to

destroy their hopes of a harvest, and the country people once more fled

for safety to their great city's defiant walls.



It was a strange spectacle, that of a powerful invading army wreaking

their wrath year after year on deserted fields, and gnashing their teeth

in impotent rage before lofty and well-defended walls and ramparts,

behind which lay their foes, little the worse for all that their malice

could perform.



Athens felt secure, and laughed her enemy to scorn. Unhappily for her, a

new enemy was at hand, against whom the mightiest walls were of no

avail. Sparta gained an unthought-of ally, and death stalked at large in

the Athenian streets, silent and implacable, without clash of weapon or

shout of war, yet more fatal and merciless than would have been the

strongest army in the field.



Athens was crowded. The country people filled all available space. There

was little attention to drainage or sanitary regulations. An open

invitation was given to pestilence, and the invited enemy came. For some

years before the plague had been at its deadly work in Egypt and Libya,

and in parts of Persian Asia. Then it made its appearance in some of the

Grecian islands. Finally its wings of destruction were folded over

Athens, and it settled down in terrific form upon that devoted city.



The seeds of death found there fertile soil. Families were crowded

together in close cabins and temporary shelters, to which they had been

driven in multitudes from their ravaged fields. The plague first

appeared in mid-April in the Piraeus,--brought, perhaps, by

merchant-ships,--but soon spread to Athens, and as the heat of summer

came on the inhabitants of that thronged city fell victims to it in

appalling multitudes.



The plague, they called it. The disease seems to have been something

like the small-pox, though not quite the same. Its victims were seized

suddenly, suffered the greatest agonies, and most of them died on the

seventh or the ninth day. Even when the patients recovered, some had

lost their memory, others the use of their eyes, hands, feet, or some

other member of the body. No remedy could be found. The physicians died

as rapidly as their patients. As for the charms and incantations which

many used, we can scarcely imagine that they saved any lives. Some said

that their enemies had poisoned the water-cisterns, others that the gods

were angry, and vain processions were made to the temples, to implore

the mercy of the deities.



When nothing availed to stay the pestilence, Athens fell into deep

despondency and despair. The sick lost courage, and lay down inertly to

await death. Those who waited on the sick were themselves stricken

down, and so great grew the terror that the patients were deserted and

left to die alone. Fortunately the disease rarely attacked any one

twice, and those who had been sick and recovered became the only nurses

of the new victims of the disease.



So dread became the pestilence that the dead and the dying lay

everywhere, in houses and streets, and even in the temples; half-dead

sufferers gathered around the springs, tortured by violent thirst; the

very dogs that meddled with the corpses died of the disease; vultures

and other carrion birds avoided the city as if by instinct. Many bodies

were burnt or buried with unseemly haste, many doubtless left to fester

where they lay. Misery, terror, despair, overwhelmed all within the

walls, while the foe without drew back in equal terror, lest the

pestilence should leap the walls and assail them in their camps.



Nor have we yet told all. Other evils followed that of the plague. Law

was forgotten, morality ignored. Men hesitated not at crime or the

indulgence of evil passions, having no fear of punishment. Many gave

themselves up to riot and luxurious living, with the hope of snatching

an interval of enjoyment before yielding to death. The story we here

tell is no new one. It has been realized again and again in the flight

of the centuries, when pestilence has made its home in some crowded

city. Human nature is everywhere the same, and the bonds of law and

morality are loosened when death stalks abroad.



For two years this dread calamity continued to desolate Athens. Then,

after a period of a year and a half, it came again, and raged for

another year as furiously as before. The losses were frightful. Of the

armed men of the state nearly five thousand were swept away. Of the

poorer people the loss was beyond computation. Nothing the human enemy

was capable of could have done so much to ruin Athens as this frightful

visitation, and to the end of the war that city felt its weakening

effects.



But perhaps the greatest of the losses of Athens was the death of

Pericles. In him Athens lost its wisest man and ablest statesman. The

strong hand which had so long held the rudder of the state was gone, and

the subsequent misfortunes of Athens were due more to the loss of this

wise counsellor than to the efforts of her foes.