Dr. Patrick Olson, an epidemiologist at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, and his colleagues wrote about their Ebola theory in the most recent issue of the journal ''Emerging Infectious Diseases.'' They argued that Ebola's symptoms in modern-day Zaire mirror those of the Greek plague reported by Thucydides in his ''History of the Peloponnesian War,'' the most complete account that has survived.

The researchers noted that most victims in ancient Greece, like those in modern Africa, died in seven to nine days, and the Athenian caretakers, much like African doctors, fell ill, while the Spartans laying siege a few hundred yards away survived. That indicates that the ancient disease was, like Ebola, spread by blood, saliva or feces, rather than by airborne microbes.

Thucydides also asserted that the disease was African, from somewhere south of Ethiopia. Ebola also has African origins. And there is even evidence that suggests the way the virus might have traveled from Africa to Greece in ancient times. On Santorini, a port island near Athens, a Minoan fresco depicts African green monkeys, which are known to be modern carriers of Ebola. Even more intriguing is the report of hiccuping among 15 percent of the victims in Kikwit, Zaire, Dr. Olson noted. Thucydides mentions hiccups.

Not everyone is ready to declare the plague of Athens an attack of Ebola, though. David Morens, an epidemiologist and leading researcher on the Athenian plague at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said in an interview that reading modern diseases into Thucydides was a mistake.

Thucydides, an Athenian general who survived the plague, lacked even the rudimentary medical vocabulary of his contemporary Hippocrates, Dr. Morens said. So his descriptions of symptoms are, at best, vague. Thucydides's word ''phlyktainai,'' for example, can be variously translated as blisters, which have fluid, or as calluses, which do not. Blisters might suggest smallpox, which is one of the candidates favored by many plague scholars, but they would rule out bubonic plague, another favorite candidate.