crisis

Second Outbreak Begins in Winter 427–426 BCE

Date

-427

Part of

crisis

Just as hope returned, winter 427–426 BCE brought a second outbreak. Thucydides says it “lasted no less than a year,” and this time he counted soldiers as well as citizens. The city braced under gray skies and familiar sounds.

What Happened

The winter after 428 did not bring relief. Thucydides writes with flat certainty: “The winter following, the plague a second time attacked the Athenians,” and it “lasted no less than a year” [2]. The city that had learned to hear the difference between cart wheels and funeral litters now heard both again.

The second wave returned to the same geography. Piraeus still moored ships in Zea and Mounichia; the Long Walls still channeled breath between port and upper city; the Kerameikos still kept the tally in smoke. The sky went gray over Hymettus; the cough resumed beneath the Acropolis. This time, Thucydides also tallied hoplites and horse [2].

The sounds of preparation at Piraeus—oarlocks tested, hulls caulked—competed with the muffled crackle from the Dipylon Gate. Inside, veterans of the first wave, now immune, took up roles as caregivers again. Outside, Spartans resumed seasonal destruction in Attica. The scarlet of Spartan cloaks and the ash-gray of Athenian pyres framed the winter and the year that followed [1], [2].

This resurgence convinced even skeptics that the city’s risk was structural as long as it lived behind the Long Walls. The corridor between port and city was not just a supply line; it was a conduit for recurrence.

Why This Matters

The second wave foregrounds Resurgence and Manpower Loss. A renewed outbreak after two years of attrition meant new deficits in crews and ranks at precisely the moment when Sparta remained aggressive. Thucydides’ duration—“no less than a year”—turns recurrence into a campaign in its own right [2].

The repetition across the same urban geography confirms the mechanism: crowding in the corridor between Piraeus and the upper city. It also deepened social fatigue, reinforcing the loosening of norms and hardening political choices that would surface in debates like Mytilene’s in 427 [1], [15].

Historians prize this clear temporal marker because it lets them separate first-wave dynamics from second-wave losses and tie specific military figures to the renewed epidemic. Without it, Athens’ manpower shortfall in 426 would be harder to apportion between war and disease [2].