military prowess or patriotic pride and devotion that could prevail.

It is one of the tragic contrasts of history--the picture of Athens, in
her full triumph and glory, smitten, at a moment when she needed to put
forth her full strength, by a deadly foe against whose might mortal arms
were vain. Her citizens were rejoicing in her social no less than her
military preëminence, and they had already been trained in the hardships
necessary to be endured in defence of an invaded country. Again they
were prepared to undergo whatever service might be laid upon them in her
behalf. They could foresee the arduous tasks and inevitable sufferings
of a great war, but had no warning of an impending calamity far worse
than those which even war, though always attended with horrors, usually
entails. Pericles had lately delivered his great funeral oration at the
public interment of soldiers who had fallen for Athens. "The bright
colors and tone of cheerful confidence," says Grote, whose account of
the plague follows, "which pervaded the discourse of Pericles, appear
the more striking from being in immediate antecedence to the awful
description of this distemper."

The death of Pericles himself, who directly or indirectly fell a victim
to the prevailing pestilence, marked a grievous crisis for Athens in
what was already become a measureless public woe. During the autumn of
the year B.C. 427 the epidemic again broke out, after a considerable
intermission, and for one year continued, "to the sad ruin both of the
strength and the comfort of the city.")


At the close of one year after the attempted surprise of Plataea by the
Thebans, the belligerent parties in Greece remained in an unaltered
position as to relative strength. Nothing decisive had been accomplished