La città malata e il suo medico. Alcuni spunti in Erodoto e Tucidide

The vocabulary of illness and treatment frequently provides an effective tool for reflecting on societies and states viewed as living organisms exposed to infectious processes capable of undermining their health and, under certain conditions, leading to their demise. This type of metaphorisation, centred on the opposition between health and disease, order and disorder, forms part of a broader framework linked to the idea of a social body treated in the same terms as biological bodies. This paper examines the issue through three case studies: the stasis of Miletus (Herodotus V, 28–29); the pathology of language and social relations in the stasis of Corcyra (Thucydides III, 82); and Nicias and the polis’s physician (Thucydides VI, 14).