Athens believed its walls would make it immortal. Pericles promised safety behind stone corridors to the sea, a strategy built on patience, fleets, and faith in empire. But once the city filled with refugees and sickness slipped past the gates, no plan could save it.
This episode of Time Machine Diaries: The Peloponnesian War takes you inside plague-ridden Athens — the suffocating streets, the breakdown of faith, the death of Pericles, and the beginning of democracy’s darkest descent. The walls meant to protect Athens instead became its coffin.
Sources
Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War. Translated by Richard Crawley. Audible edition.
Donald Kagan. Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy. Simon & Schuster, 1991. Audiobook available.
Victor Davis Hanson. A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War. Random House, 2005.
The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization. PBS, 2000.
Athens: The Dawn of Democracy. PBS/NOVA, 2008.
Engineering an Empire: Greece. History Channel, 2006.
Roberts, Jennifer T. “The Plague of Athens.” Transactions of the American Philological Association, vol. 121, 1991, pp. 141–156.
Ober, Josiah. Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power of the People. Princeton University Press, 1989.
