The Economist UK - 28.03.2020

The EconomistMarch 28th 2020 79

1

I

t is oneof the most lurid descriptions in

literature of a society collapsing under

the shock of a virulent disease. In 430bc,

the second year of its war with Sparta, the

vibrant city of Athens was struck by a mala-

dy that caused panic, despair and a loss of

faith in sacred values and institutions.

Symptoms included raging fever, retching,

convulsions and disfigurement. According

to Thucydides, “the catastrophe was so

overwhelming that men, not knowing

what would happen to them next, became

indifferent to every rule of religion or law.”

In his chronicle, Thucydides places

ghoulish images of the plague immediately

after an oration over the war dead by Peri-

cles—a speech that celebrates the open-

ness and egalitarian optimism of the Athe-

nian state. Perhaps the juxtaposition was

meant to emphasise the destruction

wrought by the scourge. Consolingly, how-

ever, modern research suggests the ancient

historian got it the wrong way round: the

documentary record is patchy, but these

days the crisis is thought to attest to the re-

silience of Athenian democracy, rather

than its fragility.

That record is certainly chastening.

Athens, the star among Greek city-states,

was profoundly damaged by the disease.

The epidemic was the first in a sequence of

dire events over three decades: military

miscalculations, a rumbling civil war be-

tween democrats and oligarchs, violent

coups, and surrender to Sparta in 404bc.

Anticipating the Bolsheviks, the Spartans

sent armed men to close the city’s assembly

and impose an authoritarian regime. To

anyone witnessing all that first-hand, it

must have felt as if the world’s first experi-

ment in rule by the people had ended.

But that feeling would have been pre-

mature. The Athenian pestilence and its af-

termath were not, in the end, a seismic

event comparable to the later plague that

began in 540ad, recurred over two centu-

ries and destroyed the late Roman world; or

to the Black Death, starting in around 1350,

which broke up the feudal society of Eu-

rope. In Athens, democracy proved stron-

ger than disease; rather than crumbling, ar-

gue Josiah Ober and Federica Carugati of

Disease and democracy

How to survive a plague

Prominent Athenians thought a disease would wreck their ancient democracy.

They were wrong

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