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The earliest preserved literary source, where the socially disruptive consequences of an extremely contagious and deadly disease are described and analysed, stems from the Classical Age of Ancient Greece (480-323 BCE). The story of ”the Athenian Plague” (ho loimos tôn Athenaiôn) appears in the Athenian writer Thucydides’ work History of the Peloponnesian War, which is an account of the war between Athens and Sparta (431-404 BCE).

The plague, which struck the Athenians during the second year of the war (430 BCE), got its most famous victim in the politician and general Pericles. Thucydides himself fell ill, but survived. Today, epidemiologists largely agree that the disease depicted by Thucydides was caused by a type of typhoid fever – the extreme deadliness of which is explained by its hitting a population that lacked immunity. The symptoms of the disease included high fever, coughing, infections, swelling, ulcers all over the body and violent diarrhoea. Most people who fell ill died between the seventh and ninth day of high fever. Those who survived were often marked for life: the infections accompanying the disease caused the loss of fingers and toes – or even eyes and genitals. Those who died were in their turn so numerous, that it was impossible to bury them all. However, the plague’s unburied victims were left in piece by scavengers; not even the birds of prey flew in their vicinity.

They stopped their rituals

How, then, was the social life of the Athenians affected by this terrible epidemic? The answer is, in short, that it was completely turned on its head. That this was the case is brought forth at the very beginning of Thucydides’ depiction of the plague. Here. Thucydides testifies as to how quickly the kind of prayers and divinations that were customary in such emergencies came to a halt. This came to pass as soon as the Athenians realized that their rites did not help the least against the horrors of the plague (panta anôfelê ên).

In its historical context, however, such a neglect of accepted religious practice was nothing short of extraordinary, since in popular ancient thought the ultimate protection of the welfare of the society was always attributed to the divine sphere. As Thucydides explains this revolutionary disruption of religious practice, however, the Athenians – due to the graveness of their misfortune – gave up their hope for redemption to such an extent, that they completely resigned from both ”fear of the gods” and ”the laws of men” (theôn de fobos ê anthrôpôn nomos). For, as they themselves conceived of their situation, they had already been subjected to the worst possible evil – and so there were no further punishments left to fear.  

In the aftermath of the merciless devastation caused by the plague, a phenomenon thus emerged that could be described as a moral re-evaluation of prevailing societal norms. This resulted, for instance, in an incontinence visible in that the kind of bodily pleasures, which were usually practiced in the hidden (ha proteron apekrupteto), now began to be conducted in public. In this, it also transpired that money almost completely lost its value: the hopelessness of the situation led to the realization of how truly perishable both one’s body as well as every piece of material possession one could acquire actually were.      

But what are the lessons that Thucydides’ story have to offer today’s world in times of crisis? My understanding is that the story of the Athenian plague should be read as a worst-case scenario. It is the story of how in an instance the hand of Fate can throw a society into a moral state of emergency, wherein a kind of general lawlessness (anomiê) takes over from the norms and practices previously taken for granted. In truth, Thucydides may here be understood to be in agreement with the foundational figureof the modern liberal tradition, Thomas Hobbes; contracts can always be broken, even when they involve an entire society. (It is notable as well that Hobbes translated Thucydides’ work into English).

Crises are opportunities

One lesson that can be drawn from the story of the Athenian plague is hence that the shields against internal and external threats a society puts up, always run the risk of being insufficient – or simply misguided. Thus, when the Athenians were first stricken by the plague, they mistakenly believed that the disease was caused by the Spartans – who were believed to have poisoned the Athenian wells. Then when the epidemic was finally over, the Athenians began to look for scapegoats among their oracle interpreters. Maybe it was so, they now reasoned, that the gods had called out the plague, because the Athenians had failed to be sufficiently aggressive in their warfare against the Spartans? Thus, the Athenians – when the danger they faced was no longer palpable – had again come to submerge into the inability to realize their powerlessness before the whims of Fate.    

Another lesson one may draw is that sufficiently serious crises also provide an opportunity for new norms and values to at least temporarily flourish. That these values then not necessarily – even in the midst of the worst crisis – need to be of the most Hobbesian selfish kind, is pointed out by Thucydides himself:

"It was those who survived the plague who showed the greatest compassion for those who were sick and about to die. They had experience of the disease, and they were no longer afraid for their own sake. For no one got sick of this plague twice, at least not fatally. And those who had survived were considered happy by others. Likewise, they congratulated themselves, and they nourished a light hope, that they would not perish in any other disease either."

In order for a society to best emerge from a crisis, it is necessary that the individual recovery process, and the newly acquired individual resilience, are transferred to the collective plane. But in order for this to transpire, it is also required that a society learns from its mistakes, and that it does not proceed into the future without the readiness that history has shown is necessary. Because to accept one’s vulnerability, and to completely expose oneself to the future blows that are always expected by the hands of Fate, are two entirely different things.