But Pericles was a broken man. Soon after his account of the plague, he mentions the death of one of its prominent victims, Pericles himself. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Thucydides himself became ill, but survived to tell a tale of epidemic disease and grim misery that gripped Athens in the early years of the Peloponnesian War. The number is pretty low, obviously, but Pericles of Athens was one such man to earn the distinction. They compared it with sequences from plague, typhus, anthrax, tuberculosis, cowpox and cat-scratch disease, and found a match with typhoid fever. The plague had serious effects on Athens' society, resulting in a lack of adherence to laws and religious belief; in response laws became stricter, resulting in the punishment of non-citizens claiming to be Athenian. Its adoption led to the concentration of the Athenians inside the walls of Athens. In the spring of 472 BC, Pericles presented The Persians of Aeschylus at the Greater Dionysia as a liturgy, demonstrating that he was one of the wealthier men of Athens. The Greek scientists, writing in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, describe how they removed teeth from the human remains and analysed the DNA they contained to find traces of the infection which killed so many Athenians trapped in a city surrounded on land by Spartans and relying on its navy's control of the sea through the port of Piraeus. The Long Death of Pericles One of the victims of the plague that swept Athens in 430 BC was Pericles himself. Prior to the plague's devastation, Athenians were already dying as a result of the war. But even if the policies of Pericles had not been abandoned by the feeble Athenian democracy, the cost of the war would have proved too great and thus Athenian defeat was inevitable. This contemplative scholar had to provide for the daily needs of himself and his young daughter. After his death, Athenian democracy was twice briefly interrupted by oligarchic revolutions towards the end of the Peloponnesian War. Pericles themes: This play deals with the unpredictable and dangerous journey through life. [2.47.3] Not many days after their arrival in Attica the plague first began to show itself among the Athenians. With dramatic irony, the author appeals over the perspective offered by the Pericles of the History. In despair the popular assembly sent a peace delegation to Sparta, and turned on the man they blamed for starting the war: Pericles. The speech continued by recognising the unique Athenian democratic values and way of life as a … One of my new precious book acquisitions is another anthology by William J. Bennett, The Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood.Today, I read The Funeral Oration of Pericles.. At the end of the first year of the 27-year Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, the Athenian General Pericles gave a panegyric for the dead soldiers of Athens. According to the historian Thucydides: '...The plague seized Pericles, not with sharp and violent fits, but with a dull lingering distemper, wasting the strength of his body and undermining his noble soul.'. Available for everyone, funded by readers. With Pericles’s eventual death from a plague, Athens, the mother of democracy, would soon fall victim to the loss of the one-of-a-kind mind that had effectively led Athens into a period of prosperity and culture. At this occasion, he speaks highly of his … The only name associated with his early education is that of the musical theorist Damon, whose influence, it is said, was not just confined to music. After the death of Pericles, the leadership in Athens was fractured, but at the same time, the fear of plague led the Spartans to interrupt their invasion of Athens, since their troops were unwilling to be put in contact with the disease. Shakespeare begins to explore it right in the beginning when the beautiful and virtuous-seeming princess of Antioch is revealed as an evil young woman. There plague struck down a third of Athens's armed forces, two sons of Pericles among them. He was fined but reelected general for 429, the year of his death. It was modified somewhat after it was restored under Eucleides; the most detailed accounts of the system are of this fourth-century modification, rather than the Periclean system. Doctors and historians have long speculated about the nature of the disease, which precipitated the end of the golden age of Athens, from the account given by Thucydides. Significance of Pericles' Death The death of Pericles was a significant event in the course of the Peloponnesian War; however, even without Pericles' leadership the Athenian Assembly had countless opportunities to prevent their loss and chose not to take them. After inheriting money as a teen, the ancient Greek statesman Pericles became a great patron of the arts. Many of the symptoms Thucydides described are consistent with typhoid fever, including fever, rash and diarrhoea. Tried in the courts he had helped to reform, Pericles was stripped of his office and heavily fined. It’s a plague that ends up lasting on-and-off about four years, but he focuses on the … In it were at least 150 bodies interred in more than five layers, many with their heads towards the circumference of the pit, but those on top "virtually heaped one upon the other," they write. Yet it seems there was much more to the story than what Thucydides reported. The Athenians had lost one of their greatest leaders. Pericles, (born c. 495 bce, Athens—died 429, Athens), ... but one can hardly speculate about the possible psychological consequences. The "hasty and impious manner of burial" as well as the age of the few burial offerings linked the site with the plague of Athens during the first years of the Peloponnesian war. It is said to have caused the death of one in every three people in Athens, and it is widely believed to have contributed to the decline and fall of classical Greece. 38. The plague had claimed his two legitimate sons and in an attempt to have his son by Aspasia declared as his heir he sought to repeal his own citizenship law. Among the victims of the plague was Pericles, the leader of Athens. Of the Athenian politicians whose speeches Thucydides relates after the death of Pericles, Nicias is the orator whose inability to manage the δημος’ impulsive nature has the most disastrous consequences. In 461, he assumed rule of Athens—a role he would occupy … In the fall of 429, at the age of about 65, Pericles, the mastermind of Athenian glory, died. Thucydides fervently supported Pericles but was less enthusiastic about the institution of democracy. As military and political leaders try to make sense of how the coronavirus has altered relations with hostile actors, they can draw important insights from past epidemics and their effects on persistent conflicts throughout history. Pericles' death was significant. "The profound disagreement on the cause of the plague has been due to the lack of definite microbiological or palaeopathological evidence," write Manolis Papagrigorakis of the dental school at the University of Athens, and colleagues. Pericles thinks that men should face the immediate Jto-, just as he praises the dead for facing the immediate 8Sot, and remember the importance of '7 es TO reTra S6Oa for good or evil. Pericles - Pericles - Restoring Athens’s preeminence: Hostilities among the Greek states had also come to an end in the Five Years’ Truce of 451. First published on Tue 24 Jan 2006 11.39 GMT. The mass burial site was located in the Kerameikos ancient cemetery in Athens and was excavated in the mid-1990s. Pericles now embarked on a policy designed to secure Athens’s cultural and political leadership in Greece. In this, the Pericles in the History becomes onist, the words of the Pericles in the History have an “education to Greece” in a way that he simply could unintended consequences: they do so because he lacks not know. How many people throughout history have so much impact on the world that an entire time period has been named after them? The man who had renounced all superstition also turned to charms to ward off the plague. Tue 24 Jan 2006 06.39 EST 9 The cause of the plague of Athens in 430BC, which devastated the city and killed up to one-third of the population, including its … 2 For Thucydides’ account of the plague, see Thucydides 2.47–55. Pericles, born in 495 BCE, an applauded Athenian statesman, ruled Athens during the later part of The Golden Age, after the Persian wars ended in 449 BCE. Pericles(roughly 495-429 BC) was an extremely influential statesman, orator, and general of ancient Athens. He rea… The notice of his death is found in Plutarch’s Life of Pericles, Per. Pericles's strategy was an offensive by sea, avoidance of battle on land, and control of the empire. This movement focuses on Athens and Pericles and at its center is the Funeral Oration. 3 For a comparison of the two accounts, see Rubincam (2004). Thucydides on the plague [2.47.2] In the first days of summer the Spartans and their allies, with two-thirds of their forces as before, invaded Attica, under the command of Archidamus, son of Zeuxidamus, king of Sparta, and sat down and laid waste the country. At any rate, Pericles eventually succumbed to and died from this plague. He organized the Athenian Empire and commanded his people in the Peloponnesian War against the rival … Were Athens to lose this momentum, they would be at serious risk from the Spartans who had committed their state to the destruction of the Athenian empire. The scientists took three teeth at random from the remains in the pit and extracted DNA from the dental pulp. Ii 65, the ancient Greek statesman Pericles became a great patron of the that! Without servants, with a two-year-old child on his hands, Prospero was forced to more! Of the plague, see Rubincam ( 2004 ) beginning when the beautiful virtuous-seeming. 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