all the house of Kadmos is laid waste, all emptied, and all darkened: Death alone battens upon the misery of Thebes. (Sophocles 4) The description highlights the collective nature of the suffering – that of the ordinary many – indicating that no one has been spared from the effects of the plague. The people are referred to in terms of the city. Thebes is pulled under the waves of death; Thebes is pitted against personified death. So overwhelming is the plague, that individuals have converged into a single entity that suffers uniformly. The repetition in “all the house of Kadmos is laid waste, all emptied, and all darkened” reinforces this sense of communal suffering. There is no distinction of experience; they are all miserable and tormented. The listing of hardships further compounds the indiscriminate nature of the plague. The harvest is rotted, the animals are ill, and the babies are dying at birth. People, animals, and plants alike are all afflicted. No one and nothing is afforded immunity. These images set the tone of the play and suggest that its concerns extend beyond the character and arc of Oedipus himself. In fact, a fifth-century Athenian audience would be keenly aware of these broader resonances, given the calamitous plague they were undergoing. The Greek historian Thucydides provides a firsthand account, having watched Athens suffer and even enduring the sickness himself. He recounts agonizing symptoms that enflamed every limb of the body: People in perfect health suddenly began to have burning feelings in the head; their eyes became red and inflamed; inside their mouths there was bleeding from the throat and tongue, and the breath became unnatural and unpleasant. The next symptoms were sneezing and hoarseness of the voice, and before long the pain settled on the chest and was accompanied by coughing. Next the stomach was affected with stomach-aches and with vomitings of every kind of bile that has been given a name by the medical profession, all this being accompanied by great pain and difficulty. (Thucydides 94) While Thucydides’ tone does not suggest over-embellishment, his words depict suffering that afflicts the full body. The plague struck suddenly and swiftly, affecting not only those with underlying conditions but also “people in perfect health.” Anyone could be struck. One imagines the anxiety that gripped Athens, no doubt amplified by the uncertainty surrounding the plague given their limited understanding of the spread of infectious diseases. Despite our more advanced epidemiological understanding, this same bewilderment echoed in the early outbreak of COVID-19. A mysterious disease ravaged the whole body with fevers, coughs, and aches. Experts 43
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