Two problems involving Thucydides and medicine have attracted intense treatment by classical scholars and medical men working separately or in combination. They are, first, the nature of the Athenian Plague which Thucydides describes and, second, the possibility of his having been influenced by the doctrines and outlook of Hippocrates and his followers. It is the purpose of the present paper to reconsider both these problems, to indicate some false assumptions made in the methodology of previous attempts to identify the Plague, (...) and to suggest a somewhat radical revaluation of Thucydides' approach to medical matters compared with that of Hippocrates. (shrink)

Since the publication of our article on Thucydides and the Plague of Athens, Dr Heinrich von Staden of Yale University has kindly drawn our attention to a paper by Eby and Evjen suggesting that the Plague was glanders. We do not think that this diagnosis can possibly be correct, though there are undoubtedly some points in its favour. The authors have argued their case as persuasively as possible, and the proposal has sufficient merit to deserve a serious reply.

M. I. Finley in his Politics in the Ancient World , 92–6 has recently cast doubt on the extent to which religious phenomena were taken seriously in ancient times. We believe that in stressing the reasons for scepticism he has overlooked much positive evidence for the impact of religious scruples on political behaviour and that in generalising he has undervalued the differences in this respect between ancient societies. The significance of some of this positive evidence is admittedly uncertain since in (...) civilian life scruples might be easy to observe without great suffering. The acid test is in time of war, so that is the concern of our present enquiry. That attitudes varied can be shown only by comparing societies. We have here limited our discussion to three for which the evidence is well preserved: the world of the Greek city before Alexander the Great, Rome before Constantine, and the Jews in the Hellenistic and Roman period. Elucidation of the reasons for their distinct attitudes would reveal much about each of these societies and its religious practices and conceptions, but there will be space here only to show that considerable variety did indeed exist. Most ancient peoples assumed that their gods approved of war; the pacifism of some pre-Constantinian Christians was exceptional. Nor did such rules in combat as were observed necessarily have a religious foundation. Ancient like modern scruples were often based on moral and humanitarian grounds, as in the treatment of corpses and civilians; the gods, as the guardians of general morality, might be involved in such matters, but only at a remove. (shrink)

The first of these is not a single disease but a group of three: ‘all the clinical and epidemiological evidence described by Thucydides’ ‘can be attributed to infection with influenza virus complicated by a toxin-producing strain of noninvasive staphylococcus’ . This initial analysis is in fact supplemented by bullous impetigo in an attempt to explain the marked skin symptoms which are not ascribable to the other two diseases: streptococci produce flushes of the skin that end in desquamation – something which (...) Langmuir et al. admit T would have described if present. (shrink)

Excavations at Sparta early in this century seemed at the time to have provided a fairly clear-cut and decisive answer to questions about the character of Spartan life in the archaic and classical periods. In the seventh century B.C. and the beginning of the sixth century, it was thought, life was comfortable and even luxurious but thereafter comforts and luxuries disappeared from among the offerings at the temple of Artemis Orthia and so, it was held, from Spartan life.