Plague of Athens
- Date
- 430–426 BCE
- Category
- Social & demographic
- Region
- Europe
- Era
- Classical Antiquity
- Significance
The Plague of Athens was a devastating epidemic that struck the city-state of Athens in 430 BCE, during the second year of the Peloponnesian War against Sparta, with major recurrences in 429 BCE and the winter of 427/426 BCE.
Entering through the crowded port of Piraeus, where refugees from the Attic countryside had been packed inside the city walls under Pericles' defensive strategy, the disease killed an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 people, roughly a quarter of the population. Its most consequential victim was the statesman Pericles, who died in 429 BCE, depriving Athens of its dominant leader at a critical moment. The historian Thucydides, who contracted the disease and survived, left a famous clinical and social account describing the symptoms, the collapse of religious and funerary customs, and the breakdown of public morality. The epidemic crippled Athenian manpower and morale and is widely regarded as a turning point that contributed to Athens' eventual defeat; the precise pathogen remains debated, with typhus and typhoid fever among the leading candidates.
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Empires active in 430–426 BCE
- Roman Republic509 BCE – 27 BCE
- Odrysian Kingdom480 BCE – 46 CE
- Achaemenid Empire550 BCE – 330 BCE
- Carthaginian Empire650 BCE – 146 BCE
- Kingdom of Kush1070 BCE – 350 CE
- Scythians800 BCE – 300 BCE
Related social & demographic events
- Han Census of 2 CE2 CE
- Antonine Plague165-180 CE
- Edict of Caracalla (Constitutio Antoniniana) grants universal citizenship212 CE
- Plague of Cyprianc. 249-262 CE
- Early Bantu Expansion from the Cameroon–Nigeria Highlandsc. 1000 BCE
- The Plague of Justinian, the first recorded bubonic pandemic541–549 CE
Further reading
The wider story
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