revived again, and lasted for another year, with the same fury as at
first. The public loss, over and above the private misery, which this
unexpected enemy inflicted upon Athens, was incalculable. Out of twelve
hundred horsemen, all among the rich men of the state, three hundred
died of the epidemic; besides forty-four hundred _hoplites_ out of the
roll formally kept, and a number of the poorer population so great as to
defy computation. No efforts of the Peloponnesians could have done so
much to ruin Athens, or to bring the war to a termination such as they
desired: and the distemper told the more in their favor, as it never
spread at all into Peloponnesus, 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 The Lacedaemonian army was withdrawn from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