eloponnesus, though it passed from Athens to some of
the more populous islands. The Lacedaemonian army was withdrawn from
Attica somewhat earlier than it would otherwise have been, for fear of
taking the contagion.

But it was while the Lacedaemonians were yet in Attica, and during the
first freshness of the terrible malady, that Pericles equipped and
conducted from Piraeus an armament of one hundred triremes and four
thousand hoplites to attack the coasts of Peloponnesus; three hundred
horsemen were also carried in some horse-transports, prepared for the
occasion out of old triremes. To diminish the crowd accumulated in the
city was doubtless of beneficial tendency, and perhaps those who went
aboard might consider it as a chance of escape to quit an infected home.
But unhappily they carried the infection along with them, which
desolated the fleet not less than the city, and crippled all its
efforts. Reenforced by fifty ships of war from Chios and Lesbos, the
Athenians first landed near Epidaurus in Peloponnesus, ravaging the
territory and making an unavailing attempt upon the city; next they made
like incursions on the most southerly portions of the Argolic
peninsula--Troezen, Halieis, and Hermione--and lastly attacked and
captured Prasiae, on the eastern coast of Laconia. On returning to
Athens, the same armament was immediately conducted under Agnon and
Cleopompus, to press the siege of Potidaea, the blockade of which still
continued without any visible progress. On arriving there an attack was
made on the walls by battering engines and by the other aggressive
methods then practised; but nothing whatever was achieved. In fact, the
armament became incompetent for all serious effort, from the aggravated
character which the distemper here assumed, communicated by the soldiers
fresh from Athens even to those who had before been free from it at
Potidaea. So frightful was the mortality that out of the four thousand
hoplites under Agnon no fewer than one thousand and fifty died in the
short space of forty days. The armament was brought back in this
distressed condition to Athens, while the reduction of Potidaea was left
as before, to the slow course of blockade.

On returning from the expedition against Peloponnesus, Pericles found
his countrymen almost distracted with their manifold sufferings. Over
and above the raging epidemic they had just gone over Attica and
ascertained the devastations committed by the invaders thro