are enlisted in the service of the state. And now, when you have duly lamented, every one his own dead, you may depart.'
47
Such was the order of the funeral celebrated in this
Second invasion of Attica; outbreak of the plague.
winter, with the end of which ended
the first year of the Peloponnesian
War.
B.C. 430
Ol. 87, 3
As soon as summer returned,
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 Zeuxidamus, 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.
48 The disease is said to have begun south of Egypt in 48 Aethiopia; thence it descended into which commenced in Athopia. The orgin causes of it are unknown, but I shall confine myself to the facts. I was myself a sufferer. 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 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
