Near East (429–418 BCE): Nehemiah’s Reforms and Cultural Consolidation

Between 429 and 418 BCE, significant religious and social reforms shape the community of Jerusalem, highlighting the growing importance of cultural identity among the Judahites, now increasingly recognized as Jews. Nehemiah, a prominent leader who had previously directed the reconstruction of Jerusalem’s walls, undertakes a second influential visit to the city during this era.

Nehemiah emphasizes strict observance of the Sabbath, seeking to strengthen and consolidate Jewish religious identity and practice. He notably condemns intermarriage between Jews and their neighbors, particularly criticizing marriages with the Ashdodites. Through these stringent measures, Nehemiah actively encourages Jews to maintain cultural and religious separation from surrounding peoples, ensuring the preservation and integrity of Jewish traditions and identity.

These reforms not only underscore Nehemiah's pivotal role in shaping Jewish communal and religious life but also reinforce a sense of collective identity essential for the resilience and continuity of the Jewish community amid external pressures and influences.

Nehemiah strengthens his fellow Jews' observance of the Sabbath on a second visit to Jerusalem, condemning the Jews of his time for intermarrying with the Ashdodites.

He ends the custom of Jewish men marrying foreign-born wives, helping to keep the Judaeans separate from their non-Jewish neighbors (Nehemiah 13).

The Hippocratic school or Koan school achieves greater success by applying general diagnoses and passive treatments.

Its focus is on patient care and prognosis, not diagnosis.

It can effectively treat diseases and allows for a great development in clinical practice.

Hippocrates is credited with being the first person to believe that diseases are caused naturally, not because of superstition and gods.

Hippocrates is credited by the disciples of Pythagoras of allying philosophy and medicine.

He separates the discipline of medicine from religion, believing and arguing that disease was not a punishment inflicted by the gods but rather the product of environmental factors, diet, and living habits.

Indeed there is not a single mention of a mystical illness in the entirety of the Hippocratic Corpus.

However, Hippocrates does work with many convictions that are based on what is today now known to be incorrect anatomy and physiology, such as Humorism.

Historians agree that Hippocrates was born around the year 460 BCE on the Greek island of Kos; other biographical information, however, is likely to be untrue.

Soranus of Ephesus, a seconnd-century Greek physician, will be Hippocrates' first biographer and the source of most personal information about him.

Later biographies are in the Suda of the tenth century, and in the works of John Tzetzes, Aristotle's "Politics", which date from the 4fourth century BCE.

Soranus will write that Hippocrates' father was Heraclides, a physician, and his mother was Praxitela, daughter of Tizane.

The two sons of Hippocrates, Thessalus and Draco, and his son-in-law, Polybus, were his students.

According to Galen, a later physician, Polybus was Hippocrates' true successor, while Thessalus and Draco each had a son named Hippocrates (Hippocrates III and IV).

Soranus said that Hippocrates learned medicine from his father and grandfather (Hippocrates I), and studied other subjects with Democritus and Gorgias.

Hippocrates was probably trained at the asklepieion of Kos, and took lessons from the Thracian physician Herodicus of Selymbria. Plato mentions Hippocrates in two of his dialogues: in Protagoras, Plato describes Hippocrates as "Hippocrates of Kos, the Asclepiad";  while in Phaedrus, Plato suggests that "Hippocrates the Asclepiad" thought that a complete knowledge of the nature of the body was necessary for medicine.

Hippocrates will teach and practice medicine throughout his life, traveling at least as far as Thessaly, Thrace, and the Sea of Marmara.

Several different accounts of his death exist.

He dies, probably in Larissa, at the age of eighty-three, eighty-five, or ninety, though some say he lived to be well over one hundred.

Ancient Greek schools of medicine are split (into the Knidian and Koan) on how to deal with disease.

The Knidian school of medicine focuses on diagnosis.

Medicine at the time of Hippocrates knows almost nothing of human anatomy and physiology because of the Greek taboo forbidding the dissection of humans.

The Knidian school consequently fails to distinguish when one disease caused many possible series of symptoms.

Sparta and its allies, with the exception of Corinth, are almost exclusively land based powers, able to summon large land armies that are very nearly unbeatable.

In the face of a combined campaign on land from Sparta and its allies beginning in 431 BCE, the Athenians, under the direction of Pericles, have pursued a policy of retreat within the city walls of Athens, relying on Athenian maritime supremacy for supply while the superior Athenian navy harasses Spartan troop movements.

Unfortunately, the strategy also results in massive migration from the Attic countryside into an already highly-populated city, generating overpopulation and resource shortage

Due to the close quarters and poor hygiene exhibited at this time, Athens has become a breeding ground for disease and many citizens die, including Pericles, his wife, and his sons Paralus and Xanthippus.

In the history of epidemics, the 'Plague' of Athens is remarkable for the one-sidedness of the affliction as well as for its influence on the ultimate outcome of the war.

The Plague of Athens is an unforeseen event that results in one of the largest recorded loss of life in ancient Greece as well as a breakdown of Athenian society.

The balance of power between citizens has changed due to many of the rich dying and their fortunes being inherited by remaining relatives of the lower class.

According to Thucydides, those who had become ill and survived are the most sympathetic to others suffering, believing that they can no longer succumb to any illness.

A number of survivors offer to assist with the remaining sick.

It has also contributed to Athens' overall loss of power and ability to expand

Many of the remaining Athenians are found to be metics who had forged their documentation or had bribed officials to hide their original status.

A number of these people are reduced to slaves once they are caught.

This resulta in stricter laws dictating who can become an Athenian citizen, reducing both their number of potential soldiers and amount of political power, but also a decline in treatment and rights for metics in Athens.

The plague deals damage to Athens two years into the Peloponnesian War, from which it will never recover.

Athenian political strength has weakened and morale among the city-state's armies as well as it's citizens has fallen significantly

Athens will now go on to be defeated by Sparta and fall from being a major superpower in Ancient Greece.

Historians will long try to identify the disease behind the Plague of Athens.

The disease will traditionally be considered an outbreak of the bubonic plague in its many forms, but reconsideration of the reported symptoms and epidemiology will lead scholars to advance alternative explanations.

These include typhus, smallpox, measles, and toxic shock syndrome.

Based upon striking descriptive similarities with recent outbreaks in Africa, as well as the fact that the Athenian plague itself apparently came from Africa (as Thucydides recorded), Ebola or a related viral hemorrhagic fever will be considered.

Given the possibility that profiles of a known disease may have morphed over time or the plague was caused by a disease that no longer exists, the exact nature of the Athenian plague may never be known.

In addition, crowding caused by the influx of refugees into the city had led to inadequate food and water supplies and a probable proportionate increase in insects, lice, rats, and waste.

These conditions would have encouraged more than one epidemic disease during the outbreak.

However, advancing scientific technologies may reveal new clues.

The Tholos at Delphi marks the first emergence of a round temple form.