Pericles: A Sourcebook and Reader

Thucydides’ Portrait of Pericles III: Plague, Last Speech, and Final Tribute

Thucydides’ Portrait of Pericles III Plague, Last Speech, and Final Tribute 79 Following immediately on the funeral oration, that brilliant account of Athenian democracy delivered by the city’s greatest statesman, and standing in juxtaposition to it, is Thucydides’ clinically vivid description of the plague that attacked the city like an invading army (2.47–54). Thucydides details the symptoms of the disease and its inexorable progression both through the bodies of those infected and through the city. Easily spread, the plague had a devastating effect on the populace, who had come in from the countryside and were crowded into the city.1 1. Despite Thucydides’ very detailed description, modern authorities have not been able to identify the disease with certainty. Smallpox, typhus, measles, typhoid fever, and influenza are frequently mentioned, but none quite suits the pathology of the disease. It appears very probable, in view of the fact that many disease-causing microorganisms mutate rapidly, that the particular disease Thucydides described no longer exists or is no longer as virulent. It attacked the very fabric of civil life that Pericles, in the careful way that Thucydides has constructed his narrative, had just finished lauding in the funeral oration. People were dying everywhere ; even the sacred places were full of corpses—a terrible violation of ancient religious practice. The disease affected both the spirits and the behavior of the Athenians. The result was that people thought quick enjoyments best and acted for pleasure only, regarding their bodies and their money as equally ephemeral. No one was ready to take trouble for something that was regarded as noble, in the belief that he might well be dead before attaining it. Whatever was presently enjoyable and anything that contributed to that enjoyment, this was established as noble and worthwhile.2 No fear of god nor any law of man served as an impediment. (2.53.2–4) The juxtaposition shocks, so quickly have the ideals enunciated in the funeral oration been cast aside; it underlines with great emphasis both the glory of that democracy and its destruction, or near destruction, by the plague. It brings home forcefully the brutal lesson that chance can wreak havoc on the best laid strategy, even that of a leader such as Pericles. Some things cannot be foreseen. The plague started at the onset of the second Peloponnesian invasion in the spring of 430. Pericles again responded as general by not allowing the Athenians to go out to fight. As Thucydides puts it, “He had the same strategy (gnome) as in the previous incursion ” (2.56.1). Instead, he organized a large war fleet in retaliation to harass coastal cities in the northeast Peloponnese. They Thucydides: Plague, Last Speech, Final Tribute / 80 2. This is a deliberate contrast with Pericles’ account of how the men praised in the funeral oration gave no thought to the possible future enjoyment of wealth when faced with death (2.42; above, pp. 73–74). laid waste the territories of Epidaurus, Troizen, Hermione, and Halieis on the coast of the Argolid Peninsula (map 5) and sacked Prasiae, a coastal town of northeast Laconia (2.55–56). When the fleet returned to Athens, the Peloponnesians had departed, and the plague was in full swing. Thucydides then includes a short account of military events in the north during the summer of 430 and adds without comment the stark fact that 1,500 out of 4,000 foot soldiers on the northern campaign—that is, nearly 40 percent of them!—died of the plague in forty days (2.58). Thucydides next presents Pericles’ third, and last, speech. Thucydides 2.59–65.4 (59) Following the second invasion of the Peloponnesians, the Athenians, since their land was devastated for a second time and both the plague and the war were oppressing them, experienced a change of heart. They were blaming Pericles for persuading them to fight, and alleging that it was on his account that they had fallen on bad times. Moreover, they were agitating for a rapprochement with the Lacedaemonians. In addition, they were sending embassies to them but accomplished nothing. Utterly at a loss for a strategy, they attacked Pericles. When he perceived that they were angered at the present situation and observed them doing exactly as he expected , he called a meeting. (He was still serving as a general.) He wanted to give them some backbone and, dispelling their angry...