Epidemics, blame and bad behaviour: common stories from Ancient Athens to 21st century Bournemouth (originally published June 2020)
Epidemics, bad behaviour and blaming are a common occurrence during outbreaks of disease, whether in 21 st century Britain or in ancient Athens. Had I realised this at the beginning of lockdown, I could have produced a prophecy, not a blog post. One of the earliest reliable descriptions of an epidemic and its impact was written by the Athenian historian Thucydides, who wrote in the 5 th century BCE. He tells how during the Peloponnesian War there was an outbreak of plague in Athens. When the disease first emerged it was attributed to the Peloponnesians having poisoned their water supplies, an idea with contemporary Trumpian parallels. As the epidemic spread, those accusations faded away, but other familiar aspects emerge. People died in isolation as friends and relatives stayed away for fear of contagion, some heroic individuals cared for the sick but at the cost of their own lives. Finally, as the scale of the calamity was revealed, pu...