Pericles on his deathbed from The Greeks documentary

The Greeks – Pericles

One of the victims of the plague that swept Athens in 430 BC was Pericles himself. According to the historian Thucydides:

‘…The plague seized Pericles, not with sharp and violent fits, but with a dull lingering distemper, wasting the strength of his body and undermining his noble soul.’

The city was devastated; morale was at its lowest ebb. In despair the popular assembly sent a peace delegation to Sparta, and turned on the man they blamed for starting the war: Pericles.

Tried in the courts he had helped to reform, Pericles was stripped of his office and heavily fined. Yet even now the people were reluctant to be rid of the man who had guided them for so long. Soon after they reinstated him.

But Pericles was a broken man. The plague had claimed his two legitimate sons and in an attempt to have his son by Aspasia declared as his heir he sought to repeal his own citizenship law. The man who had renounced all superstition also turned to charms to ward off the plague. In the fall of 429, at the age of about 65, Pericles, the mastermind of Athenian glory, died.

The Pelopennesian War – 431: The Beginning of the Great War

Long Death of Pericles56K – ISDN – T1