Earliest recorded pandemic

The earliest recorded pandemic was the Plague of Athens, which spread throughout the Mediterranean between 430 and 426 BCE. In total somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000 people died, with the worst affected areas being in what is now Libya, Egypt and Greece.

In Athens, 25% of the population died. The Athenian general and historian Thucydides recorded his own experiences of the pandemic between 430 and 426 BCE. The epidemic killed the renowned statesman Pericles and contributed towards the decline and fall of the Greek empire.

Thucydides made detailed accounts of the features of the disease so that future generations would be able to identify it. However, modern scholars disagree about what sort of disease the Plague of Athens really was. Theories include typhus, plague, and smallpox.