Plague in Athens during the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides' himself suffered from the plague and recovered; thus he was an eyewitness to the catastrophe (might this have affected his reportage of it?). His expressed intention was not to suggest causes or to identify the illness, but to provide as complete and accurate a description as possible so that the illness could be recognized should it ever recur in the future (in this he showed the influence of the Hippocratic emphasis on prognosis). But the reader cannot be unaware of the dramatic contrast to the idealism that had just been expressed in the Funeral Oration. Thucydides lived in an era in which rhetoric was a highly praised and widely practiced skill, and its effect on his work can often be noticed. Unfortunately, none of our other sources mentions the outbreak, and we cannot confirm his account directly. While it is true that the lack of other notices in literature or archaeological evidence such as mass graves is somewhat puzzling, nevertheless, Thucydides was writing for an audience that included many who had lived through the events themselves, so that we cannot suspect outright invention on his part. [Greece Ancient Links]