There are three outstanding events in the internal history of Sparta during the sixth century. First, there is the constitutional settlement denning the functions of the Crown, the Senate, and the Assembly: this is now generally admitted to have taken place about 600 B.C. Secondly, there is the increase in the importance of the ephorate, a pseudo-democratic development associated with the ephor Chilon and the year 556. Thirdly, there is the decline in Spartan material culture; this process begins shortly after (...) the turn of the century with the abandonment of gold and ivory work, and culminates shortly after the middle of the century in an almost total collapse of artistic and cultural standards. (shrink)

This is one of the most controversial passages in Thucydides' Archaeological Introduction, and perhaps the least happily phrased. Scholiasts explain is as meaning Athens in other respects, Greece other than Athens. Jowett, whose suggestions have not on the whole been bettered by later commentators, suggests three main possibilities of interpretation.

In a recent re-assessment of the medical aspects of the Plague of Athens which is, to date, the most scholarly and comprehensive, Poole and Holladay have emphasized the tendency of many infectious diseases markedly to decline in virulence over decades and centuries and, sometimes, significantly to change their clinical manifestations. In the light of modern medicine they consider four possibilities: The Plague was a disease which still exists today. This they regard as improbable, It still exists in some remote place (...) or places unknown to medical science. This is discussed and dismissed, It became extinct, It was caused by an agent which nowadays causes a significantly different clinical syndrome. They conclude as follows: ‘The truth, we suggest, almost certainly lies in possibility or . But we can see no way of choosing between them. On either view the question: “What was the Athenian Plague?” is in principle unanswerable if the questioner is wanting to attach to the Plagsie the name of some modern disease or diseases’. (shrink)