Plague of Athens

The Ancients

History Hit

History

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2020

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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.

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Ancients, a new podcast dedicated to all things, well, ancient.
0:08.0	I'm Tristan Hughes and in each episode I'll be chatting with a world-leading historian
0:12.6	or archaeologist about our distant past.
0:16.4	The art, the architecture, the battles, the larger-than-life personalities, events that
0:21.7	have helped shape the world we live in today.
0:24.6	From Neolithic Britain to the fall of Rome, from the Assyrians to Alexander the Great.
0:32.2	Today I'm going to be joined by Alistair Blanschard.
0:35.4	He is a professor in ancient history at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.
0:41.3	And today's topic seems rather timely for the moment.
0:44.3	Yes, that's right, we are going to be talking plague, a plague ancient style.
0:50.4	In particular, we're going back to 430 BC and the most prominent city-state in the Aegean.
0:57.0	This is The Plague of Athens.
0:59.8	Go and love it, enjoy.
1:03.5	Alistair Blanschard, it's great to have you on the show.
1:06.5	Hello there, greetings from Australia.
1:09.4	Now we are talking about, it seems pretty timely for the moment.
1:13.2	The great plague of Athens, we're just the plague of Athens.
1:16.9	And this was a remarkable event.
1:19.3	It brought one of the most powerful city-states of its time to its knees.
1:25.2	Yes, an extraordinary event really.
1:28.3	You know, a plague which comes out of nowhere within the space of a year, probably up to 25%
1:36.5	of the population of Athens is dead, extraordinary kind of event.
	...

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