crisis

First Wave Persists Through 428 BCE

Date

-428

Part of

crisis

The initial outbreak did not fade quickly. Through 428 BCE, Athens kept breathing inside its walls, burning at the Kerameikos, and burying dead as Thucydides’ symptoms repeated. Hope flickered, but the coughs did not stop.

What Happened

By 428 BCE, Athenians counted in seasons since the first fever at Piraeus. The Spartans had come and gone; the azure Saronic still carried ships into Zea; the Long Walls still funneled bodies and breath. Thucydides dates the initial wave to 430–428 BCE, a span long enough to teach patterns—eighth-day deaths, ulcered skin, unquenchable thirst—and to erode patience [1].

The city adapted without relief. In the Agora, sellers returned, and dice clicked again on marble, but black smoke still climbed above the Dipylon Gate. The crackle of pyres at Kerameikos remained the daily drumbeat while the Acropolis watched in silence. Physicians, fewer now, moved carefully; survivors, marked by scars and a measure of immunity, tended neighbors with grim efficiency [1], [15].

Thucydides’ calm persists in his chronology. He acknowledges slackening, not ending. The first wave “lasted” through this year, teaching the city to live on two calendars—campaign seasons and contagion seasons—neither of which could be wished away [1]. The scarlet of festival garments returned in patches; the bronze of shield rims dulled for lack of oil.

Everything depended still on the corridor: the Long Walls between Piraeus and the upper city. Each creak of cart wheels carried both food and risk. The port remained the lung; Athens remained the chest that heaved, never quite resting [1], [16].

Why This Matters

Persistence is the point for Resurgence and Manpower Loss. A two-year first wave meant attrition rather than shock alone. Rowers, hoplites, and artisans vanished from rolls; orphans and widows replaced them in the city’s count. Even as the worst moments of 430 subsided, 428 did not return life to normal [1], [15].

This endurance eroded spare capacity in every system—families, crews, treasuries—that Athens would need when a second outbreak returned in winter 427/6. The memory of symptoms and funerary backlog also set the psychological stage for 427’s harsher debates; the city had learned to expect the worst and to legislate accordingly [2], [15].

For historians, dating the first wave through 428 matters because it prevents compressing the crisis into a single season. Thucydides’ span ties the plague’s rhythm to the war’s, making clear that the disease was not an interruption but an environment [1].