Thucydides Roundtable, Book II: When Bacteria Beats Bayonets
In the end, Pericles succumbed to the plague, and Athens lost an important leader. Those who came after him chose a different strategic path for the city, which ultimately proved costly for the Delian League. This incident during the Peloponnesian War is worth making us pause and think about the role of contagions and disease in human history. It has wiped out cultures and set the conditions for the successful expansion of others. It has served as a significant factor in wars of the past. Finally, it may yet play a major role in world affairs again, and we must take measures now to ensure we are prepared.
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zen:
October 31st, 2016 at 5:18 am
Hi Joe
.
Disease, like hunger, is too often underrated in military history. Until very recent times, armies literally had to keep marching in order to not get sick and have enough to eat. Even after germ theory, sanitation and the importance of potable water were understood, the campaign in Cuba during the Spanish-American War was a race – not against the Spanish, but against time before the men contracted tropical diseases and became too ill to fight.
HW Bill Sparks:
October 31st, 2016 at 8:06 pm
The irony is that as technology in medicine increases the survival rate among war time injuries and diseases that would normally keep the soldier out of the fight, the technology of war itself continues to reduce the number of soldiers needed to pursue the war. A twenty thousand man front line moving across a battlefield is now only seen in the history books.