military

Documented Military Deaths in the Second Wave

Date

-426

Part of

military

By 426 BCE, Thucydides counted at least 4,400 hoplites and 300 cavalry dead in the second outbreak, besides unnumbered civilians. Empty armor racks and quiet stables made the cost visible. War needs men; the plague took them.

What Happened

Numbers sharpen grief. In Book 3, Thucydides supplies a soldier’s tally for the second wave: “No less than four thousand four hundred heavy infantry” and “three hundred cavalry” died, apart from civilians he does not attempt to count [2]. The figures turn the Agora’s abstractions into absences—empty ranks on muster days, stalls unfilled in the cavalry’s lines.

In Athens, bronze cuirasses dangled on pegs that spring; the clink of greaves in the armory grew rare. On the Pnyx, logistai worked sums by the scarlet lines on their tablets, trying to crew triremes at Zea and Mounichia with fewer men. Families in Acharnai and along the Long Walls marked the same deficit with blacker signs at the Kerameikos [2].

The loss of 4,400 hoplites bit deep into a corps that Britannica estimates at around 14,000 before the war—a cut approaching one-third when combined with earlier deaths [15]. The death of 300 cavalry blunted the city’s eyes and mobility, handicapping both scouting and rapid response in Attica’s varied terrain.

Thucydides’ choice to count soldiers, when he refuses to guess at civilians, is itself a sign of priority: the war’s engine needed integers, and the plague stripped them. The numbers rustle like papyrus in a quiet office; outside, the azure Saronic still gleamed, indifferent [2].

Why This Matters

These figures anchor Resurgence and Manpower Loss in explicit costs. They explain why Athens’ strategic options narrowed in subsequent campaigns: fewer hoplites for land operations, fewer horse for reconnaissance, and pressure on crews even as the fleet remained central [2], [15].

They also sharpen the social profile of loss. Hoplites and cavalry came from citizen strata with political weight. Their absence altered Assembly dynamics and juries, intensifying the harsher tone of 427 and beyond. Quiet stables and shorter phalanx lines translated directly into harder votes [15].

For historians, the contrast between counted soldiers and uncounted civilians is instructive. It reveals a wartime state tracking what it needs to fight while letting household sorrow go unnumbered. The figures tie epidemic history to operational history with unusual precision [2].