From the historian's notes

Athens, 430 BCE

Greece · Europe · summer 430 BCE · summer

What it was high

the leading city of Greece, its population swollen by the country people of Attica, who have moved inside the Long Walls to escape the Spartan invasionsinhabited since the Bronze Age

That year

• The plague: it appears first at the Piraeus and spreads through a city crammed with refugees. Thucydides catches it, survives, and writes its symptoms down so that it might be recognised again from early summer 430 BCE highperhaps a quarter or a third of the population dies over the following years
• The Spartans invade Attica again and ravage the fields for about forty days, watched from the walls summer 430 BCE highthe countryside burned in sight of the city
• Pericles leads a fleet around the Peloponnese; later this year the angry city fines him and removes him from command. He dies of the plague the next year 430–429 BCE highthe city turns on its leader

Who held it high

the Athenian democracyPericles, re-elected general year after year, leads the city's policywar with Sparta began last year; Pericles' strategy is to abandon the countryside and live off the sea behind the walls

Its name high

AthenaiWritten in Greek, in the old Attic alphabet: Athens adopts the Ionic letters only in 403 BCE

The date, there medium

the 87th Olympiadyears named after the eponymous archon; the OlympiadsSundials and the water clock of the law courts; the market fills in the morning.

Money medium

the Athenian silver drachma (the owl)six obols to the drachmaa day's wage for a skilled worker is about a drachma

Weather medium

summer: hot and dry, 30 °C and more, dust and harsh light

Things

Objectssilver owl coins; red-figure pottery; ostraka: potsherds used as ballots; clay oil lampsFoodbarley bread; olives and olive oil; figs; watered wine; salted fishClothwool and linen tunics; the himation cloakGetting abouton foot; triremes in the harbourIn the airdust and heat; too many people in too little space; funeral pyres

What she'd hear

Attic Greek; the visiting sailors and merchants bring every other dialect of the Aegean.

Where she could stand

• the Long Walls — the walls running to the Piraeus, lined with the shelters of refugee families
• the Agora — the market and civic square, stoas and law courts
• the Parthenon — finished only two years ago, its marble still bright and painted
• the Piraeus — the harbour town where the sickness began

Researched for this card · confidence high