The Ancients - Plague of Athens

Episode Date: June 24, 2020

Plague in the ancient world was nothing unusual. Bouts of illness were common occurrences, but we do have accounts of some exceptional outbreaks: epidemics that brought powerful empires and city-states to their knees. One of the most infamous occurred in 430 BC: the Plague of Athens. Recently I was fortunate enough to interview Alastair Blanshard, a Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Queensland, about this devastating episode in Athenian history.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like The Ancients ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. Welcome to The Ancients, a new podcast dedicated to all things, well, ancient. I'm Tristan Hughes, and in each episode I'll be chatting with a world's leading historian or archaeologist about our distant past. The art, the architecture, the battles,

the larger-than-life personalities, events that have helped shape the world we live in today. From Neolithic Britain to the fall of Rome, from the Assyrians to Alexander the Great. Today, I'm going to be joined by Alistair Blanchard. He is a professor in ancient history at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. And today's topic, it seems rather timely for the moment. Yes, that's right. We are going to be talking plague, but plague ancient style.

And in particular, we're going back to 430 BC and the most prominent city-state in the Aegean. This is the Plague of Athens. You're going to love it. Enjoy. Alistair Blanchard, it's great to have you on the show. Hello there. Greetings from Australia. Now, we are talking about, it seems pretty timely for the moment, the Great Plague of Athens, or just the Plague of Athens.

And this was a remarkable event. It brought one of the most powerful city-states of its time to its knees. Yes, an extraordinary event, really. A plague which comes out of nowhere within the space of a year. Probably up to 25% of the population of Athens is dead. Extraordinary kind of event. What is the state of Athens just before the plague breaks out? Right, well, Athens is on a war footing at this point. So the great conflict between Athens and Sparta, the Peloponnesian War, has just kicked off. So this is all happening within the second year of the Peloponnesian War. So Athens and Sparta have come into conflict. And importantly, Athens has made a strategic decision, a decision which strategically makes

a lot of sense, but as we'll see, has tragic consequences. Namely, it's decided to retreat behind its walls at this point. So all the people who lived in the countryside of Athens at this stage are now living in the city. And they're crushed together, jostling cheek by jowl, trying to find accommodation wherever they can. The Athenian population at the moment, was most of it located outside the city of Athens? Yes. So Athens is quite an urban city. But even still, although it's quite urban, it does have a very significant countryside population. So Athens had at least 12 important countryside townships, as well as

lots of numerous villages as well. So there's a huge number of population that is actually living in the countryside when war is declared. And Athens faces this problem when war is declared, which is that Athens is fantastic as a military force in terms of fighting on the sea. It has a navy that is unsurpassed throughout the Aegean. However, it's fighting against a city-state, Sparta, which is the preeminent force for fighting on land. And so Athens has this problem. How can it shift the battle onto the sea? And in order to do that, it decides it mustn't engage with Sparta on the land, and it needs to retreat behind its city walls so that the sea then becomes the battleground. I mean, logistically, this seems like quite a remarkable task to achieve. How long does it take to gather all of the Athenian citizens

from around the countryside and bring them inside the Athenian walls? Look, it seems an amazing movement of population. And even today, we marvel at the logistics involved. It's also not awfully clear whether everyone did move inside the walls. There's some suggestion that, in fact, a lot of people remain outside in the countryside. But certainly a significant percentage of the population does move to the city, particularly that population which is on the western side of Attica, the side that will be most in line when the Spartan forces and their allies invade from the west. So certainly all of western Attica, as well as large amounts of people from the north, also move into the city. It's an extraordinary logistic operation.

And who is the mastermind behind this strategy? Well, the mastermind behind it is the Athenian leading statesman at the time, a man by the name of Pericles, who's one of the important democratic politicians at this period. Thucydides, our main historian of this period, is a huge fan of Pericles. So he writes in his History of the Peloponnesian War about the virtues of Pericles, the foresightedness of Pericles, and also the tremendous sway that Pericles has with the people. He says, in name, the city was a democracy, but in practice, it was actually the rule of one man, and that man was Pericles. So he's immensely popular with the people? But in practice, it was actually the rule of one man, and that man was Pericles.

So he's immensely popular with the people. Yes, and he'd been popular for a while. He'd been a popular general as well as politician. And together with another popular politician, Ephialtes, they had been very important in increasingly making Athens democratic, important in increasingly making Athens democratic, breaking down the power structures of the old elites, and increasingly giving power to the people. So Pericles is a really important figure. He's also the mastermind behind the extraordinary building program we see on the Acropolis. So things like the Propylaia, the Parthenon, all the grand buildings that we associate with Athens today were really driven by Pericles and his policies. So he's a remarkable figure. He's the figure that makes Athens, Athens. And it's his decision then, he is the mastermind behind the strategy of bringing

everyone in behind these long walls. But there are some unforeseen consequences to these actions. But there are some unforeseen consequences to these actions. Yes. Well, and, you know, it's not a long term strategy. It's quite a clever short term strategy to bring people behind the walls. People often wonder how long did Pericles imagine he could keep the population contained within the city. But certainly it's a clever move at the start. at the start. But from a virological, epidemiological perspective, it's possibly the worst move you can possibly make to have thousands of people all crammed into the city with poor sanitation. Remember, of course, that there's no such thing as proper plumbing at this period, so that it really has extraordinary, terrible conditions. Do you think Athens was already

overcrowded before this new influx of citizens came within its walls? Well, it's always a bit hard to tell. If you ask the elite writers, they always think there are far too many people in Athens. They always think that Athens is a city. And in fact, they describe Athens as a city in fever. They're already thinking of Athens as a sick city. So from our kind of elite writers' perspective, they think there are too many people in Athens. And that's certainly the case. Athens is larger than any other Greek city in the world at this point. So normally you imagine, you know, a city to have possibly between 1,000, 2,000 citizens or so.

Athens has at least 25,000. So it's, you know, 10 times, you know, the size of your kind of average city. Even the sort of great sort of cities of Corinth, which, you know, we imagine some 8,000, 10,000 maybe citizens, you know, it's twice the size of that. It's, you know, it's four times the size of its nearest rivals, Megara. I mean, so it's. So it's an enormous city in comparison to all the other cities to start off with. Does Thucydides give this idea that there

was this overwhelming sense that, yeah, this sounds like a good idea? Look, what Thucydides describes is, in fact, actually a lot of resentment. There are a lot of quite angry farmers who aren't particularly happy about moving in behind the walls. And indeed, actually, there does seem to be quite a lot of popular resentment to this decision to move into the city. The comic playwright Aristophanes, for example, talks about how the farmers are particularly unimpressed by this move and how they miss their farms in the countryside. So there's, I think, a lot of, as you would expect, a lot of resentment to what's happening. They're actually right not to want to go, because within the space of a year, we have this sudden outbreak of disease. within the space of a year, we have this sudden outbreak of disease. And this disease comes, according to Thucydides, from Africa. So there's a disease which starts, he says, in Ethiopia.

It then moves down the Nile to Egypt, on to Libya, the other great kingdom in North Africa. And then it moves across, and it first arrives in Athens in the Piraeus, which is the port of Athens. So it comes across with people traveling, as indeed, as we know with disease today, it's travelers that are the primary vectors of disease. So at this time, you mentioned Athens' maritime empire. So Athens has got, its port is the main place for travel across the Mediterranean look its port is one of the great destinations of the world in the in the port of Athens you could find goods from the Levant from Egypt uh from you know far away

Libya you could find them from Sicily Spain I. I mean, all of the world comes to Athens. So Athens is this amazing commercial center. And it's a mixing of people. It's extraordinary. The Piraeus, the port of Athens, is this amazing cosmopolitan place where dozens of kind of religions are worshipped. We know that there's worship to, for example, Isis occurring in the Piraeus. Foreign goddesses like Bendis come along. So it's this amazing cosmopolitan place where Egyptian perfume sellers jostle with wild Scythians to sell goods. It's an extraordinary kind of marketplace. So it should make no surprise, really, that this is where Thucydides says is where the plague starts to break out in Athens. Yes. And this plague, which he says starts in Ethiopia, goes to Egypt, Libya, and then arrives in the port of Athens.

And then once it's in the port of Athens, it goes from the port. And the port was essentially a separate community from the main city of Athens, but it was joined by these long walls. Now, these walls normally provided a point of separation between the Piraeus and the main center of Athens. But, of course, when Pericles fills the city with people, where do they go? Well, they fill the vacant spaces. And one of the big vacant spaces is the long walls. So you have this, as it were, kind of line of bodies that links both the Piraeus all the way through to the centre of Athens. God, that's quite a terrifying, distressing image. So you have like this connection, as it were, between the harbour and the main city. Yes, yes.

A line of refugees finding space to live. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And we get these extraordinary descriptions of life in the long walls in these communities, you know, living in essentially makeshift tents, that sort of thing. essentially makeshift tents, that sort of thing. And so I'm guessing the disease spreads, as soon as it hits the Piraeus, it spreads pretty quickly to the main city. Yeah, and within the space of a few days, it's already made it to the main city. A few days?

Yeah, it's really quick. It's really quick. And then Athens, essentially all of Athens has to deal with this disease. Was there any kind of ancient equivalent that at least we know of, like of quarantine within Athens? No, no, they do know that it is transmitted by physical contact. Because one of the things Thucydides tells us is that actually, one of the tragedies was that once people fell sick, they were abandoned. People didn't visit them. People didn't go and care for them. They were left essentially to deal with their disease by themselves and either recover or tragically die. So they did know that there was sort of physical contact.

And indeed, they do have a concept of miasma, this idea of pollution that can move from one person to another. So they do have some notion of physical contact, but they certainly don't understand what we would call physical distancing or social isolation or any of those sorts of concepts. We have this amazing account of the plague surviving in Thucydides. And Thucydides, he of almost day by day account of the symptoms of the plague. It's an astonishing piece of writing, you know, absolutely extraordinary in terms of the kind of level of observation and the clarity of observation. And in doing this, of course, Thesiod has an agenda for this because he himself was a man who was suspicious of other kinds of explanations and causes. He's no great believer in the idea of the divine as a kind of agent that causes things, which, of course, a lot of people did at this period.

You know, a lot of people, when the disease broke out, thought that it was a sign from the gods. So Thucydides is himself a much more rational kind of figure. And he wants to describe the symptoms that he's suffering. So there's a kind of rational account of the disease. So he provides a rational day-by-day account, and he himself was a survivor of it. It sounds like you can't get many sources better than that. Yes, no, absolutely. Absolutely. In the ancient world, it really is hard to do it. And one can, in a sense, understand why Thucydides is keen to give a kind of rational account of the disease, because, you know, there is, you know, within the Greek mindset, a strong

sense that actually these kinds of plagues are sent by the gods, right? That this is a kind of religious problem rather than an epidemiological problem. So, you know, if you think, for example, to the opening of the Iliad, right? What's the opening of the Iliad? Well, it's the Greek camp in plague. And why is that they're in plague? Because Apollo is shooting arrows, plague arrows, into the Greek camp. So that idea that the gods, into the Greek camp. So that idea that the gods fire plague into you is something that Thucydides is kind of battling hard against. And in that regard then, so what does Thucydides say? What are the first signs of the plague on a person? Right. So Thucydides says, look, the first thing that happens to you is you get a fever. And then you have this

extraordinary fever that wracks your body. You also get redness and inflammation of the eyes. And then this leads to starting to bleed. You start to bleed, particularly from the throat. You have terrible kind of bad breath. And these are the sort of initial symptoms that you face. You then go through sneezing. Often you lose your voice. There's coughing and vomiting and that kind of thing. So he says it's sort of the disease starts in the head with the eyes and the throat and then moves down into the kind of stomach and lungs where you're coughing, vomiting. He then says it goes to the skin and you get these kind of pustules or ulcers on the body so that it's so painful, he says, that even to have the lightest kind of linen on you is something that he thinks

is just too painful to even have that on you. You're thirsty, he says. The thing you're also driven by at the stage is thirst. He know people were so thirsty they would have thrown themselves down wells if they could so it's an extraordinary thing and he said normally and this these are the symptoms that normally happen in the first seven to eight days of of the disease and he said that most people are dead by this point so but about after seven to eight days of catching the disease, he said most people are dead. It's only after eight days you then start to go into a recovery phase. But even that recovery phase has some fairly kind of terrible symptoms associated with it. He talks about insomnia, terrible diarrhea. There's also a sense that your circulation is impaired as well. So he talks about

the way in which you get kind of gangrene on your genitals, your fingers, your toes. Amnesia, memory loss, he said, is often associated with the survivors as well. They can't remember who they are, where they've come from. So it sounds like it takes over at one stage or another the whole of your body. Yes, absolutely. He's very clear that it kind of starts in the head and works all the way through. And he describes, as I say, in extraordinary detail what happens. If people are interested in the history of plagues, Thucydides, book two, chapters 51 to 53, it gives you the best description of plague. Have we got any archaeology evidence that has been discovered that might back up what Thucydides is saying? Look, we have a lot of evidence to support the evidence of the plague. I mean, in fact, only quite recently, so in 1994,

we actually discovered, in fact, a plague burial, which we assume comes from this period. We've discovered 240 bodies in a pit with very, you know, the bodies are kind of thrown together. There's not a great deal of care. There's not a high degree of value of grave goods. It looks like it's done in haste. From what we can see, the dating looks absolutely right to the period of the plague. So it looks like, in fact, we have a plague burial that certainly would conform at 240 bodies all piled together in 430. You know, it's hard to think of an explanation that doesn't point to the plague for this one. That might be able to help people nowadays figure out what actually caused this. Yes, look, there's been some attempts to try and do the archaeology on it.

Some people, for example, have looked at the teeth and there they say, well, look, there's some suggestion, perhaps, of salmonella. And if that was the case, they say, well, then that might point towards typhoid as a possible cause of the plague. However, this is quite heavily disputed. And indeed, there's some suggestion that actually the evidence is not as conclusive as you'd like. So there's some problems, I think, with the evidence. I mean, over 30 different kinds of suggestions have been made for what the actual plague is.

I mean, traditionally, we always thought it was the bubonic plague, but that's now gone out of fashion. Typhus is another good example, a good candidate. Typhoid, as I say, is one that looks also quite potential. People have pointed to the fact that it comes out of Africa and have wondered whether perhaps it might be one of the sort of hemorrhagic fevers, a bit like Ebola, for example, that comes out of Africa. So there are some suggestions. As I say, there's been 30 or so suggestions that have been put forward. None of them are quite perfect. And part of the problem is that Thucydides' description is so good that it's hard to get a disease that matches all of the symptoms. So you can get some that match a few of them. Particularly, people are very attracted by these pustules and

ulcers on the body, which seems to support either typhus or typhoid. But the problem is trying to get all of the symptoms together. And indeed, one suggestion is that, in fact, actually, and this is apparently very common within plague scenarios, is that because people's bodies are weak, actually, you often find two or three diseases running rampant at the same time. And so it may be the case that what in fact Thucydides is describing is in fact being described suffering from in fact two diseases, and that in fact the symptoms sort of overlap. And so we need to sort of tease out one group of symptoms from another group of symptoms.

I mean, that's interesting, because back in the 5th century BC, was there, obviously this plague was unprecedented, but was there, like every year, did they expect that, you know, some of the population would die from an illness or another? Look, yes, they're absolutely very familiar with plague. And indeed, Thucydides says, you know, up until that year, they'd been relatively free from plague. So it's something that they're very familiar with. As I say, you know, the Iliad begins with a plague. If you think about tragedy, for example, Oedipus Tyrannus, one of the great tragedies of Athens,

For example, Oedipus Tyrannus, one of the great tragedies of Athens, begins with the city of Thebes in plague. And they're attempting to solve the riddle of why is this plague broken out. So plague is something that they're totally familiar with. So it's not the case that they've never had anything like this. And indeed, we know that there are lots of religious cults associated with plague. So plague is something that they're familiar with, but they've never seen it on this scale. They've never seen it like this before. Wow. Another reason why we're all so lucky to be living in this day and age. Yes. And especially because most of the suggestions are bacterial suggestions. So either typhus or typhoid are both bacterium-driven. Typhus is transmitted

through the feces of lice. Typhoid is a sort of bacterium associated with salmonella and is transmitted from human to human. But both of them are very relatively easy to treat these days. We just don't see them breaking out anymore. So we're extraordinarily lucky to be living in an age in which these terrible diseases are actually relatively easily treatable. Was one group of people more susceptible to it than another? No. And that's what's interesting is Thucydides says, it doesn't matter whether you're young or old, fit or strong, wealthy or poor, this disease does not discriminate and it's lethal for everyone. And that has a huge mental impact on the population. They realise that nothing is going to let them escape at age, social status,

lifestyle. None of those are going to let you escape the plague. It makes you understand how the mental impact can really be, as you say, if anyone could die from it. Yeah, and Thucydides himself is observant of this. He says, for example, that one of the greatest killers was despair. He said, you know, the real tragedy was the moment you developed the symptoms, you knew what was ahead of you, and you just lost the will to live. And he talks about, in fact, the mental cost that the disease had. I mean, for Thucydides, what he sees coming out of the plague is man's kind of worse nature making a manifest itself. He says, you know, look, you know, people quickly realize, you know, why be good? You know, because the good aren't rewarded. Why believe in the gods? Because the gods aren't going to save you. You know, so, you know, he says, you know, people who did, you know,

who did vices in secret now did them openly. No one planned for the future. They just lived for the moment. Law, he says, breaks down because, you know, why obey the laws when the future seems because why obey the laws when the future seems uncertain? So he sees this outbreak of immorality, of lawlessness, of impiety as a direct product of the disease. And he gives examples of people just ignoring their duties to their parents. The fact that the normal burial rites for him aren't observed is a real marker. And it's hard to overstate just how seriously the Greeks take burial. And that's what makes this plague burial so amazing, right? You know, 240 bodies all piled together.

That's not how Greeks do things. Burial for them is super important. It's the greatest duty that a child owes to their parents is to ensure that they give them the proper burial. Indeed, if you're standing for high office in Athens, one of the things you're quizzed about is, can you tell us where the tombs of your parents are? I.e., are you a person who can put their hand on their heart and say, yes, I made sure that my parents had a proper burial? If you can't do that, you can't stand for high office in Athens. You take a play like, for example, Sophocles' Antigone, right? A play whose very central kind of premise is about a woman who stands up to the laws of the state and faces the tragic fatal consequences of breaking those laws

just so that she can ensure the proper burial of her brother. So burial for the Athenians and for the Greeks in general is a really important thing. So the fact that people are no longer burying people properly, they're violating each other's pyres, they're just taking a body and borrowing someone's pyre, throwing another body on to the top of each other's pyres, they're just taking a body and borrowing someone's pyre, throwing another body on to the top of someone else's pyre. And of course, that's a big issue because what you're doing there is once you kind of burn the bodies, you're supposed to

then retrieve the bones. And of course, if you've thrown a body onto a pyre, well, how do you work out whose bones are whose? So it's a real insult to someone to throw another body onto their pyre. It totally throws out all the funerary rituals. So yes, but people are just doing this in this state of lawlessness and anarchy. It really strikes at the heart of several key traditions that the ancient Athenians considered central to their way of living. Yeah, it completely changes their way of life, at least for the moment. And of course, the other thing to say is that one of the important victims of the plague is Pericles. So the great leader of Athens also is one of the victims of this plague. So Athens is without leaders at this point as well. And that's the other important thing to note.

When does Pericles die? Is it right at the start of his strategy or is it nearer the end? Yes. So it's within 430. So when the plague breaks out in its first iteration. It should be said that the plague breaks out in 430. It then returns again in 429, and then a few years later in 427, 426. So the plague that affects Athens has about three different outbreaks, but it's the 430 one that is the really important one. This is all being, not overshadowed, but at the same time that this is going on, Athens is still at war. How do the Spartans react to hearing that their enemy is dealing with this other enemy, as it were? Well, the Spartans decide very sensibly not to attack at this point.

They don't want to be anywhere near this plague city. at this point. They don't want to be anywhere near this plague city. And so they effectively call an end to their attacks on Athens and retreat back quite sensibly to their own cities. So Athens, at least, is spared having to fight a battle on two fronts. The war will, of course, continue the following summer. But yes, the plague is at least the thing that Athens has to deal with by itself. It doesn't have to worry too much about also fending off an external attack. Does Sparta not become a plague city, or Corinth, or Thebes, or Megara, or any of the other prominent city-states? Do they all avoid the scourge that hits Athens? any of the other prominent city-states, do they all avoid the scourge that hits Athens?

Well, as far as we can see, the plague itself does, in fact, seem to occupy most of bits of the eastern Mediterranean. So it's not just Athens that is dealing with this plague. However, none of the cities seem to suffer it as badly as Athens. And I suspect it really is the conditions of overcrowding that make Athens such a victim of the plague in this period. I think it's that overcrowding, as well as the size, the fact that no one is leaving the city, that I think is really crucial. How does this plague affect the Athenian psyche after the plague rescinds, after it starts to diminish. Yes, yeah. So no one, of course, forgets the plague. And indeed, I mean, Thucydides' description of the plague ensures that the plague is memorialised for eternity. And indeed, Lucian, in in fact, a text written centuries later, he's a Greek writer writing under the Romans,

written centuries later, he's a Greek writer writing under the Romans, he talks about how to write history. And in his essay on how to write history, he says, look, everyone, whenever they describe a plague, just goes back to Thucydides and effectively cut and pastes Thucydides' plague, because no one can do a plague as good as Thucydides. So we see, in fact, Thucydides' description of the plague becoming the definitive description of what a plague should be. Lucretius also, for example, talks about the plague in Athens. And again, in his description, is very dependent on Thucydides. So Thucydides' description of the plague becomes almost like an instant classic. And it has this tremendous literary impact as well as psychological impact. So it's very significant on the history of ancient medicine as well.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Thucydides, when he's describing the symptoms, clearly seems to be influenced by what's happening in contemporary Hippocratic medicine. So this is a school of medicine that is associated with Hippocrates of Kos. And it's a school of medicine which places a lot of emphasis on description of symptoms and observation. And so it is a school of medicine which produces a whole lot of documents which look a lot like actually Thucydides' description of symptoms. So it's a school of medicine which is very interested in observation. It's also a school

of medicine which places a lot of emphasis on diet, as well as social conditions as well, that is to say, making sure that the air is good, that the water is good, and kind of, I suppose, what we'd call sanitation. So it's a school of medicine, which in sex is quite, I suppose we'd call it like public health these days. It's a very sort of public health focused school of medicine. Do you think this plague is significant in the course of the Peloponnesian War? Yeah, look, I think it certainly puts Athens on the back foot. Now, Athens will rebound, and it rebounds actually extraordinarily well given the circumstances. And so that within the space of a few years, it's already, you know, making, I think, significant inroads against the Spartan forces. But it certainly does put Athens on the back foot. And it does mean that Athens doesn't plan any major kinds of expeditions, really, until about 15 years later, when it goes

to Sicily to have this terrible sort of aborted Sicilian expedition. But really, I think militarily, it does put it on the back foot. The extraordinary thing about Athens and the great secret to Athens' success is its ability to be able to get its hands on resources and to be able to manipulate those resources. So Athens just has resources available to it that no other city has. Attica is an area much larger than any other city would control. It has silver mines. It has plains that produce crops. It's also got a fantastic fleet, which allows it to bring in grain from places like the Black Sea. So Athens can lay its hands on resources that no other city can. So it can bounce back in a way that no other city can. So it can bounce back in a way that no other

city can as well. So it's infrastructure and its economy is such that it's ready to return back to business after the plague goes. You would argue that actually the plague in the long term, it doesn't have a huge effect in deciding the Peloponnesian War in Sparta's favour? No, it doesn't. In fact, actually, if you look at the history of the Peloponnesian War, it's often broken up into kind of two phases. So the first phase of the Peloponnesian War, we call sort of the Archidamian War, the second phase, we call them the Ionian War. War. And that first phase, I think most people would call it, you know, a tie, possibly even with advantage to Athens. So certainly it's not the case that Athens loses the first half of the Peloponnesian War. Indeed, arguably, Athens is the victor of the first half.

Wow. So it comes to plague and still arguably the victor of the war that they're fighting at the same time Yes, yeah, amazing, amazing So yes, within the space of 10 years or so Were there any plagues in the period of ancient Greece, of classical Greece You know, the time of Athens and Sparta and Thebes and that lot That we know of that could rival that in scale and in severity To the one that occurred in Athens in 430 BC? No, there's nothing like it.

Our historical records don't give us anything like the plague in Athens. It stands out as something unprecedented. There's nothing like it before. And really, after 4265, there's really nothing like it again. So it stands out as a pretty unique kind of event. I mean, thank goodness. I mean, it's hard to imagine a city that could have survived, you know, another serious bout. Alistair, it's been a pleasure talking to you. And thank you so much for coming on the show. Absolutely great fun.