It was a disaster of epic proportions that altered not only the Peloponnesian War, but the whole of Greek, and consequently world, history. The disease, largely believed by modern scholars to have been either typhus or typhoid, even killed the great Athenian general and statesman Pericles, his wife, and their sons, Paralus and Xanthippus. This deadly epidemic swept through the city in 430 B.C., the second year of the Peloponnesian War, claiming perhaps 100,000 lives and revealing in stark contrast the fissures and fractures in Athenian life and politics. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately it is very hard to tell at this point), history offers us a number of examples of when a plague arrived at the wrong time.Īnd none of these examples is better than the Great Plague of Athens. Basically, if the social and moral fiber of a society are already being tested, the widespread fear of death at the hands of an invisible killer makes everything exponentially worse. A time when international relations are strained and internal strife widespread. And no time is worse than when a nation is already in crisis, when trust in its leaders and itself is already low. Not that there is a right time for a pandemic, but some times are definitely the wrong one. This is not the right time for a pandemic.
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