• Applying Modern Immunology to the Plague of Ancient Athens

After the Persian wars in the early fifth century BCE, political disagreements between Athens and Sparta led to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. The late-5th-century-BCE Athenian historian and eye-witness Thucydides, who wrote the History of the Peloponnesian War, tells us that in 431 BC, the Athenian general Pericles devised a strategy for dealing with the superior Spartan land army by bringing a large part of the rural population of Attica into the city walls of Athens and its harbor Piraeus. The influx of so many refugees caused overcrowding, which contributed to poor sanitary conditions. Already in the second year of the war, in 430 BCE, a devastating disease broke out in Athens, claiming the lives of a substantial part of the population. Although Thucydides provides a first-hand account of the symptoms of the plague, modern historians have not been able to definitively identify the pathogen that caused the epidemic.

The present study examines the different factors involved in the spread of the plague in ancient Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. I investigate how the refugee crisis caused by the strategy of Pericles affected the rapid spread of the plague, and how this spread could have been slowed down through the adoption of protocols developed by modern immunologists. Understanding the conditions in ancient Athens during the plague can help studies of modern regions that are experiencing overcrowding and outbreak of similar diseases. Using the most probable identifications of the Athenian plague, I used a function derived from an SIR model (“S” for susceptible people, “I” for infected people, and “R” for recovered people) to compare the spread of these modern diseases to the conditions in Athens during the plague. I then discuss specific hygiene and sanitation methods that could have slowed the disease spread.