In the spring of 430 King Archidamus again set out from Sparta with an army to devastate the lands of Attica. The Athenian country people again withdrew behind the walls of Athens for safety. But this time the devastation to Athens would be much worse than anything Sparta could inflict on them directly. Traders from Egypt brought an infection from Ethiopia on their ships. What exactly the disease was we cannot say: bubonic plague, influenza or some other epidemic.[17] With people from the country crammed into the great city with whatever they could pack and many setting up shantytowns in open spaces,[18] sanitation conditions were bad and contact with others unavoidable. Conditions were ripe for an outbreak of disease, and the ships in the Piraeus brought a frightful one with their cargoes of grain.
The disease broke out first in Piraeus, but quickly spread to Athens.[19] We have an eyewitness account from the historian Thucydides, who caught the disease himself and lived to tell of it. “People in perfect health suddenly began to have burning feelings in the head,” he recounted;
their eyes became red and inflamed; inside their mouths there was bleeding from the throat and tongue, and the breath became unnatural and unpleasant. The next symptoms were sneezing and hoarseness of voice, and before long the pain settled on the chest and was accompanied by coughing. Next the stomach was affected by stomach-aches and with vomitings of every kind of bile that has been given a name by the medical profession, all this being accompanied by great pain and difficulty. In most cases there were attacks of ineffectual retching, producing violent spasms; this sometimes ended with this stage of the disease, but sometimes continued long afterwards. Externally the body was not very hot to the touch, nor was there any pallor; the skin was rather reddish and livid, breaking out into small pustules and ulcers. But inside there was a feeling of burning, so that people could not bear the touch of even the lightest linen clothing, but wanted to be completely naked, and indeed most of all would like to have plunged into cold water. Many of the sick who were uncared for actually did so, plunging into water-tanks in an effort to relieve a thirst which was unquenchable; for it was just the same with them whether they drank much or little. Then all the time they were infected with insomnia and the desperate feeling of not being able to keep still.[20]
Many people died on the seventh or eighth day of the infection. If they did not, the disease settled in their lower parts, causing diarrhea that could be fatal, and infecting the genitals and extremities.
“Words indeed fail one,” concludes the historian, “when one tries to give a general picture of this disease; and as for the sufferings of individuals, they seemed almost beyond the capacity of human nature to endure.” The plague struck people all through the city: rich and poor, bond and free. It caused personal despair and civil chaos. The virtuous cared for the sick and often caught the disease themselves; the selfish indulged themselves on the assumption that their days were numbered. With no one to care for them, whole families perished. Since the city was full of country people during the siege, there were many without housing. Sick people staggered down the streets and died in public places. The temples where people went for refuge and supplication were piled with dead bodies. Corpses were burned rather than buried, or hastily buried with no ceremonies. Dogs caught the disease and died alongside their masters. The city became one vast morgue that even carrion birds avoided as if in fear for their lives.
For all the calamity, the city did not give in. Although people looked to past oracles for an understanding of the plague, they did not see in the war and plague a punishment for their misdeeds, as they might have in earlier times. The more intellectual inhabitants looked at the plague as a natural occurrence rather than a divine omen, to be understood by reason and controlled by medical science — someday. Thucydides himself looked on the awful scene with a scientist’s eye and recorded the outbreak in the hope that later generations could recognize the symptoms and learn from the Athenians’ experience. Athens was shaken but not overthrown.
The Spartans occupied Attica for forty days while the funeral pyres were burning. Undaunted by Spartans or by plague, Pericles sent a force of one hundred and fifty ships with four thousand infantry and three hundred cavalry to attack the coasts of the Peloponnesus. Potentially more deadly than their arms was the plague they carried with them, for some of the soldiers fell ill on the expedition.[21]
When this force returned, the generals Hagnon and Cleopompus took charge and sailed for the north to support the force besieging Potidaea. They brought with them or constructed siege engines to attack the city. But the plague arrived with them, carried by infected soldiers and sailors. The disease ran through Hagnon’s force and also the army that had been stationed outside Potidaea. We do not hear that Socrates was infected, but no doubt many of his comrades were. The plague hit Hagnon’s force worse than the other troops. In forty days he lost more than a fourth of his four thousand infantrymen. He had no choice but to return to Athens with his decimated force, leaving Socrates and the original army no better off than they had been before, and indeed worse, since they now had to fight the plague.
But however bad it was for the Athenians, it was worse for the Potidaeans. Their food stores had been dwindling and were now exhausted after years of siege. So hungry were the inhabitants of the city that cases of cannibalism occurred. Finally in the depth of winter they sent word that they were willing to negotiate. The Athenians, for their part, were weary and homesick after two and a half years of being on campaign. Moreover, the siege operation had cost the state some two thousand talents, a cost out of all proportion to the value of the prize they hoped to gain. Their real objective was to enforce obedience among the cities of the Delian League, whatever that might cost. But they had made their point and it was time to cut their losses.
The Athenian generals agreed to allow the citizens of Potidaea to abandon the city with their families. Men could take one garment each, women two, and they could carry a determined amount of money. The Athenians took over the city and planned to settle it with their own colonists. Because of colonization plans and hope of further victories, the Athenian army was not called home, but stayed on another season.
Under the command of the general Xenophon (not the follower of Socrates by the same name), who had negotiated the surrender, the Athenian army marched two thousand strong against the nearby city of Spartolus, hoping that a democratic party within the city would betray it into their hands. But the people of Spartolus had sent to nearby Olynthus for forces to help them fight the Athenians. The two armies clashed outside Spartolus. The Athenian heavy infantry defeated the heavy infantry of Spartolus, which retreated back to the city; but the light infantry and cavalry of Athens was defeated, and eventually the whole Athenian army collapsed and retreated back to the reserves guarding the baggage. The army of Spartolus pressed to the attack, striking at long distance with javelins. The Athenian generals were killed and their soldiers’ retreat turned into a rout.
The Athenians fled all the way back to Potidaea. As was the Greek custom, they recovered their dead under a truce. The people of Spartolus put up a trophy, a suit of captured armor, as a memorial of their victory. The Athenians had lost four hundred and thirty of their two thousand, and all their generals.[22]
The Athenians recalled the dejected Athenian army shortly after this battle, replacing them with about a thousand colonists to occupy the deserted city.[23] The army had been in the field for three long years, for at least two years living in tents and enduring the harsh weather of the north. From the spring of 432 until the spring of 429 the voice of Socrates was not heard in the streets of Athens. Yet he had won the hearts of his comrades in arms by his courage and steadfastness, and had made one valuable friend: Alcibiades, son of Clinias, whose star was just beginning to rise as a result of his military prowess, his family connections, and his physical beauty. As for Socrates, who preferred the life of the private citizen, his star was about to rise too, for very different reasons.
[17].Thucydides 2.47-48.1.
[18].Thucydides 2.14, 17, 52.
[19].Thucydides 2.48.2.
[20].Thucydides 2.49, tr. Warner.
[21].Thucydides 2.56-57.
[22].Thucydides 2.79. Gomme interprets Plato Charmides 153b-c as referring to the same battle as that described in the Symposium (220d-e, Gomme 1945:1:219), namely the battle of Potidaea described in Thucydides 1.62-63 as occurring at the beginning of the siege. But the Charmides may well refer to the Battle of Spartolus, which started outside of Spartolus but ended at Potidaea (only a few miles away). The latter battle was much more costly to the Athenians than the former and fits Socrates’ report better. See Planeaux 1999, followed by Nails 2002:311-312; Lampert 2010:237-240. (Hornblower 1991-2008, 1:106 connects only the Symposium account with the first battle, and does not mention the Charmides account.)
[23].Thucydides 2.70.4-5; Diodorus Siculus 12.46.7.