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Athens

The leading city of Attica and the largest city-state of classical Greece.

Today: Athens, Greece

The Plague at Athens, and Pericles Answers the Athenians

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 2 (sections 47–65) · after 430 BCE (events of 430–429 BCE)

2.48.2

ἐς δὲ τὴν Ἀθηναίων πόλιν ἐξαπιναίως ἐσέπεσε, καὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἐν τῷ Πειραιεῖ ἥψατο τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ὥστε καὶ ἐλέχθη ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ὡς οἱ Πελοποννήσιοι φάρμακα ἐσβεβλήκοιεν ἐς τὰ φρέατα· κρῆναι γὰρ οὔπω ἦσαν αὐτόθι. ὕστερον δὲ καὶ ἐς τὴν ἄνω πόλιν ἀφίκετο, καὶ ἔθνῃσκον πολλῷ μᾶλλον ἤδη.

Then it fell on Athens without warning. It struck first at Piraeus, so that people there even claimed the Peloponnesians had poisoned the wells, for Piraeus had no fountains yet. Later it reached the upper city too, and from then on far more people died.

2.54.5

περὶ μὲν οὖν τοῦ χρηστηρίου τὰ γιγνόμενα ᾔκαζον ὁμοῖα εἶναι· ἐσβεβληκότων δὲ τῶν Πελοποννησίων ἡ νόσος ἤρξατο εὐθύς, καὶ ἐς μὲν Πελοπόννησον οὐκ ἐσῆλθεν, ὅτι καὶ ἄξιον εἰπεῖν, ἐπενείματο δὲ Ἀθήνας μὲν μάλιστα, ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων χωρίων τὰ πολυανθρωπότατα. ταῦτα μὲν τὰ κατὰ τὴν νόσον γενόμενα.

People supposed that events were matching the oracle. The sickness broke out just after the Peloponnesians invaded, and it never entered the Peloponnese to any extent worth mentioning. It spread most of all through Athens, and after that through the most crowded of the other places. Such were the events of the sickness.

The Plague at My Country House, and a Life for a Life

Aelius Aristides, Sacred Tales II and V · early 170s CE (plague events of the mid-160s, probably 165 or 166)

B16

ἔπειτα οὐ πολὺ ὕστερον ἡ Ἀθηνᾶ φαίνεται τήν τε αἰγίδα ἔχουσα καὶ τὸ κάλλος καὶ τὸ μέγεθος καὶ σύμπαν δὴ σχῆμα οἵα περ ἡ Ἀθήνησιν ἡ Φειδίου.

Not long after, Athena appeared. She had her aegis, and in beauty, in size, and in her whole form she looked just like Phidias's Athena in Athens.