The Plague of Athens

Immediately after Pericles' great speech, Thucydides describes a devastating plague that struck Athens. He describes the symptoms in clinical detail (he caught it himself and survived). But more significant is the social breakdown: the sick were abandoned, the dead unburied, temples filled with corpses. "Men now coolly ventured on what they had formerly done in a corner" - lawlessness spread because punishment seemed meaningless when death was random. Religious fear vanished because the pious died as often as the impious. The virtues Pericles praised collapsed under pressure.