Julie Chibbaro

You’ve all heard about it: Athens vs. the Persians, Athens vs. Sparta, the Peloponnesian War, the expansion of Athens into Italy, those godlike Greek bodies in battle. The push into different countries, the desire to take over the world.


Statue Of A Victorious Youth by Andrew Schmidt
So what happened? Why aren’t we speaking Greek today?

Around 420 B.C., Athens fell. Was it the wrath of Zeus who decided to eradicate a civilization? Did other countries get so peeved that they decided to wage a world war against the Greeks and wipe them out?

Nope, it was much smaller than that. The thing that took down the Athenians was a bug.

Anthrax? That sounds dangerous enough to wipe out a civilization, right? It wasn’t that.

Smallpox? That also ends with x, and did kill over 2 million American Indians, right? It wasn’t that.

According to DNA analysis of teeth from an ancient Greek burial pit, the cause of the Fall of Athens was typhoid fever.

It seems typhoid fever has been around since the beginning of mankind, and in this blog, I aim to explore this and other epidemics. I’ll choose different aspects to focus on, and if anyone has a particular epidemic they’d like to know more about, just comment and let me know. I’m always looking for a good story!