Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/251

45-48] THE PLAGUE I35 are enlisted in the service of the state. And now, when you have duly lamented, every one his own dead, you may depart.' Such was the order of the funeral celebrated in this 47 winter, with the end of which ended c„. j ■ ■ r , ^ iv^v.^ Second invasion of the first year of the Peloponnesian Attica; outbreak of the^^- '^'^°- War. As soon as summer returned, P^'^S^'y ' ^' the Peloponnesian army, comprising as before two-thirds of the force of each confederate state, under the command of the Lacedaemonian king Archidamus, the son of Zeuxi- damus, 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. A similar disorder is said to have previously smitten many places, particularly Lemnos, but there is no record of such a pestilence occurring elsewhere, or of so great a destruction of human life. For a while physicians, in ignorance of the nature of the disease, sought to apply remedies ; but it was in vain, and they themselves were among the first victims, because they oftenest came into contact with it. No human art was of any avail, and as to supplications in temples, enquiries of oracles, and the like, they were utterly useless, and at last men were over- powered by the calamity and gave them all up. The disease is said to have begun south of Egypt in 48 Aethiopia ; thence it descended into w/u'c/t coynmenced in E^ypt and Libya, and after spreading ^^^^opia. The ongin ^'^ , c 1 T-i • ^"^ causes of it are tin- over the greater part of the Persian known, but I shall con- empire, suddenly fell upon Athens. It fine myself to the facts. first attacked the inhabitants of the I ivas myself a sufferer. Piraeus, 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