Just what was this mysterious illness that swept across the Athenian City-State, and which took the lives of so many? In an attempt to identify the disease entity that decimated the Athenian population, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) compared the symptoms described by Thucydies and those observed in the modern world of epidemiology. Their conclusion may surprise you. It will even surprise you more if you consider that this is the same technique used in epidemiology today - right now in the Anthrax investigations.
The plague of Athens (430-427/425 B.C.) persists as one of the great medical mysteries of antiquity . Sometimes termed "the Thucydides syndrome" for the evocative narrative provided by that contemporary observer , the plague of Athens has been the subject of conjecture for centuries. In an unprecedented, devastating 3-year appearance, the disease marked the end of the Age of Pericles in Athens and, as much as the war with Sparta, it may have hastened the end of the Golden Age of Greece. Understood by Thucydides to have its origin “in Ethiopia beyond Egypt, it next descended into Egypt and Libya” and then "suddenly fell upon" Athens’ walled port Piraeus and then the city itself; there it ravaged the densely packed wartime populace of citizens, allies, and refugees. Thucydides, himself a surviving victim, notes that the year had been "especially free of disease" and describes the following major findings: After its "abrupt onset, persons in good health were seized first with strong fevers, redness and burning of the eyes, and the inside of the mouth, both the throat and tongue, immediately was bloody-looking and expelled an unusually foul breath. Following these came sneezing, hoarseness . . . a powerful cough . . . and every kind of bilious vomiting . . . and in most cases an empty heaving ensued that produced a strong spasm that ended quickly or lasted quite a while." The flesh, although neither especially hot nor pale, was "reddish, livid, and budding out in small blisters and ulcers." Subject to unquenchable thirst, victims suffered such high temperatures as to reject even the lightest coverings. Most perished "on the ninth or seventh day . . . with some strength still left or many later died of weakness once the sickness passed down into the bowels, where the ulceration became violent and extreme diarrhea simultaneously laid hold." Those who survived became immune, but those who vainly attended or even visited the sick fell victim .
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