Lessons from Antiquity for Our Current Pandemic

“Thucydides subsequently goes on to say, ‘In other respects also Athens owed to the plague the beginnings of a state of unprecedented lawlessness.’”

Plague is a common recurrence throughout history. Luckily, we do not live in an era when a quarter to a third of the population would be killed off by the sudden outburst and lingering persistence of a pandemic. Of all ancient writers and thinkers, Thucydides had the most to say and most to teach about politics in an age of pandemics and pandemonium.

One of the most consequential events of the Peloponnesian War occurred during its initial outbreak: the infamous “Plague of Pericles.” Like our own epidemics, Thucydides recounts how the plague was seized by political opportunists—imperialists and pacifists alike—who were steadfastly opposed to Pericles’ entrenchment war policy. That the plague strikes Athens after the hubristic but oft romanticized “Funeral Oration” gives us pause for consideration.

Thucydides was far from a celebrator and apologist for Athenian democratic imperialism. He was, in fact, a soft critic of Athenian democratic imperialism. He loved the Athens he grew up in. He despised its downward plunge into tyranny, which he associated with the opportunism of demagogues, political and militaristic hubris, and the general arrogance of the Athenian mentality.

Thucydides writes, “that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to the rule of religion or of law.”

During the Funeral Oration, Pericles boasts that Athenians will always uphold the rule of law no matter what. He lauds the Athenians and their character for their ritual observances of Athenian customs: legal, political, and religious. As Pericles says, “When you realize [Athens’] greatness, then reflect that what made her great was men with a spirit of adventure, men who knew their duty, men who were ashamed to fall below a certain standard.” This “greatness,” Pericles argues, is why Athens is “unique” among all the polities of the world. Yet, when he proceeds to describe the disastrous consequences of the plague, the thin façade of Athenian exceptionalism is torn down and revealed to be hollow. “[T]he catastrophe was so overwhelming,” Thucydides writes, “that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to the rule of religion or of law.” Thucydides subsequently goes on to say, “In other respects also Athens owed to the plague the beginnings of a state of unprecedented lawlessness.”