Thucydides' Description of the Great Plague at Athens

Abstract

The nature of the Plague described by Thucydides in Book 2, chapter 49, has long been discussed both by medical and by classical scholars. Of numerous suggested identifications none has found general approval; and it is doubtful whether any opinion is more prevalent today than that the problem is insoluble. The classical scholar is handicapped by his ignorance of medical science; his medical colleague has often been led astray by translations deficient in exactitude if not disfigured by error. The difficulties are great enough: but there is one indispensable preliminary task which can be undertaken with some prospect of success. If Thucydides' description is to be compared with modern records, it is necessary first to determine what the Greek words mean; and that can only be done by determining how far the Greek is expressed in the technical terms of contemporary medical science. It is obvious that Thucydides required a special vocabulary for this part of his work; and in fact over forty words in chapters 49 and 50 are unexampled elsewhere in his History, and a dozen more are used in meanings unexampled elsewhere. It is certain that a number of medical treatises were in circulation in Thucydides' lifetime, and that a more or less standard vocabulary had been or was being established. Now if it can be shown that the great majority of the terms employed by Thucydides in ch. 49 recur, apparently with the same meanings, as standard terms in the contemporary doctors, our second task—the comparison of Thucydides' description with modern records—will become a more rational undertaking than it was before, no longer the doubtful speculation which many of the modern doctors suppose it to be, thinking as they do that they have to deal with a layman's generalities expressed in literary language.