volume 1, book 2, section 34-47.

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ATHENS: B. C. 130-429. The Plague in the city. Death of Pericles. Capture of Potidæa.

"As soon as the summer returned [B. C. 430] the Peloponnesians ... invaded Attica, where they established themselves and ravaged the country. They had not been there many days when the plague broke out at Athens for the first time. ... The disease is said to have begun south of Egypt in Æthiopia; thence it descended into Egypt and Libya, and after spreading over the greater part of the Persian Empire, suddenly fell upon Athens. It first attacked the inhabitants of the Piæeus, and it was supposed that the Peloponnesians had poisoned the cisterns, no conduits having as yet been made there. It afterwards reached the upper city, and then the mortality became far greater. As to its probable origin or the causes which might or could have produced such a disturbance of nature, every man, whether a physician or not, will give his own opinion. But I shall describe its actual course, and the symptoms by which anyone who knows them beforehand may recognize the disorder should it ever reappear. For I was myself attacked, and witnessed the sufferings of others. The season was admitted to have been remarkably free from ordinary sickness; and if anybody was already ill of any other disease, it was absorbed in this. Many who were in perfect health, all in a moment, and without any apparent reason, were seized with violent heats in the head and with redness and inflammation of the eyes. Internally the throat and tongue were quickly suffused with blood and the breath became unnatural and fetid. There followed sneezing and hoarseness; in a short time the disorder, accompanied by a violent cough, reached the chest; then fastening lower down, it would move the stomach and bring on all the vomits of bile to which physicians have ever given names; and they were very distressing. ... The body externally was not so very hot to the touch, nor yet pale; it was a livid colour inclining to red, and breaking out in pustules and ulcers. But the internal fever was intense. ... The disorder which had originally settled in the head passed gradually through the whole body, and, if a person got over the worst, would often seize the extremities and leave its mark, attacking the privy parts and the fingers and toes; and some escaped with the loss of these, some with the loss of their eyes. ... The crowding of the people out of the country into the city aggravated the misery; and the newly-arrived suffered most. ... The mortality among them was dreadful and they perished in wild disorder. The dead lay as they had died, one upon another, while others hardly alive wallowed in the streets and crawled about every fountain craving for water. The temples in which they lodged were full of the corpses of those who died in them; for the violence of the calamity was such that men, not knowing where to turn, grew reckless of all law, human and divine. ... The pleasure of the moment and any sort of thing which conduced to it took the place both of honour and of expediency. No fear of God or law of man deterred a criminal." Terrified by the plague, when they learned of it, the Peloponnesians retreated from Attica, after ravaging it for forty days; but, in the meantime, their own coasts had been ravaged, as before, by the Athenian fleet. And now, being once more relieved from the presence of the enemy, though still grievously afflicted by the plague, the Athenians turned upon Pericles with complaints and reproaches, and imposed a fine upon him. They also sent envoys to Sparta, with peace proposals which received no encouragement. But Pericles spoke calmly and wisely to the people, and they acknowledged their sense of dependence upon him by re-electing him general and committing again "all their affairs to his charge." But he was stricken next year with the plague, and, lingering for some weeks in broken health, he died in the summer of 429 B. C. By his death the republic was given over to striving demagogues and factions, at just the time when a capable brain and hand were needed in its government most. The war went on, acquiring more ferocity of temper with every campaign. It was especially embittered in the course of the second summer by the execution, at Athens, of several Lacedaemonian envoys who were captured while on their way to solicit help from the Persian king. One of these unfortunate envoys was Aristeus, who had organized the defence of Potidaea. That city was still holding out against the Athenians, who blockaded it obstinately, although their troops suffered frightfully from the plague. But in the winter of 430-429 B. C. they succumbed to starvation and surrendered their town, being permitted to depart in search of a new home. Potidaea was then peopled anew, with colonists.

_Thucydides, History, translated by Jowett, book 2, section 8-70._

ALSO IN: _E. Abbott, Pericles and the Golden Age of Athens,