"Even if You Think You Have Never Read Thucydides, the Odds Are You Have"

"While not thought of as medical history, Thucydides's account had wide influence on plague literature to come. Works like Albert Camus' The Plague and Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year—both of which have become newly popular among those looking to better understand the novel coronavirus—mined, at times mimicked Thucydides for their own texts. In fact, the shadow cast by Thucydides' story stretches from Lucretius' On the Nature of Things to Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal." 

At Slate, Robert Zaretsky discusses "The Plague That Killed Athenian Democracy."