Kitap 2
An argument whereof as touching the birds is the manifest defect of such fowl, which were not then seen, neither about the carcases or anywhere else. But by the dogs, because they are familiar with men, this effect was seen much clearer.
So that this disease (to pass over many strange particulars of the accidents that some had differently from others) was in general such as I have shown, and for other usual sicknesses at that time no man was troubled with any. Now they died some for want of attendance and some again with all the care and physic that could be used.
Nor was there any to say certain medicine that applied must have helped them; for if it did good to one, it did harm to another.
Nor any difference of body, for strength or weakness, that was able to resist it; but it carried all away, what physic soever was administered.
But the greatest misery of all was the dejection of mind in such as found themselves beginning to be sick (for they grew presently desperate and gave themselves over without making any resistance), as also their dying thus like sheep, infected by mutual visitation, for the greatest mortality proceeded that way. For if men forebore to visit them for fear, then they died forlorn;
whereby many families became empty for want of such as should take care of them. If they forbore not, then they died themselves, and principally the honestest men. For out of shame they would not spare themselves but went in unto their friends, especially after it was come to this pass that even their domestics, wearied with the lamentations of them that died and overcome with the greatness of the calamity, were no longer moved therewith.
But those that were recovered had much compassion both on them that died and on them that lay sick, as having both known the misery themselves and now no more subject to the danger. For this disease never took any man the second time so as to be mortal. And these men were both by others counted happy, and they also themselves, through excess of present joy, conceived a kind of light hope never to die of any other sickness hereafter.
Besides the present affliction, the reception of the country people and of their substance into the city oppressed both them and much more the people themselves that so came in.
For having no houses but dwelling at that time of the year in stifling booths, the mortality was now without all form; and dying men lay tumbling one upon another in the streets, and men halfdead about every conduit through desire of water. The temples also where they dwelt in tents were all full of the dead that died within them.
For oppressed with the violence of the calamity and not knowing what to do, men grew careless both of holy and profane things alike.
And the laws which they formerly used touching funerals were all now broken, every one burying where he could find room. And many for want of things necessary, after so many deaths before, were forced to become impudent in the funerals of their friends. For when one had made a funeral pile, another getting before him would throw on his dead and give it fire. And when one was in burning, another would come and, having cast thereon him whom he carried, go his way again.
And the great licentiousness, which also in other kinds was used in the city, began at first from this disease. For that which a man before would dissemble and not acknowledge to be done for voluptuousness, he durst now do freely, seeing before his eyes such quick revolution, of the rich dying and men worth nothing inheriting their estates.
Insomuch as they justified a speedy fruition of their goods even for their pleasure, as men that thought they held their lives but by the day.
As for pains, no man was forward in any action of honour to take any because they thought it uncertain whether they should die or not before they achieved it. But what any man knew to be delightful and to be profitable to pleasure, that was made both profitable and honourable.
Neither the fear of the gods nor laws of men awed any man, not the former because they concluded it was alike to worship or not worship from seeing that alike they all perished, nor the latter because no man expected that lives would last till he received punishment of his crimes by judgment. But they thought there was now over their heads some far greater judgment decreed against them before which fell, they thought to enjoy some little part of their lives.
Such was the misery into which the Athenians being fallen were much oppressed, having not only their men killed by the disease within but the enemy also laying waste their fields and villages without.
In this sickness also (as it was not unlikely they would) they called to mind this verse said also of the elder sort to have been uttered of old:
Now were men at variance about the word, some saying it was not loimos [plague], that was by the ancients mentioned in that verse, but limos [famine]. But upon the present occasion the word loimos deservedly obtained. For as men suffered, so they made the verse to say. And I think if after this there shall ever come another Doric war and with it a famine, they are like to recite the verse accordingly.
There was also reported by such as knew a certain answer given by the oracle to the Lacedaemonians when they inquired whether they should make this war or not:
that if they warred with all their power, they should have the victory, and that the God himself would take their parts. And thereupon they thought the present misery to be a fulfilling of that prophecy. The Peloponnesians were no sooner entered Attica but the sickness presently began, and never came into Peloponnesus, to speak of, but reigned principally in Athens and in such other places afterwards as were most populous. And thus much of this disease.
After the Peloponnesians had wasted the champaign country, they fell upon the territory called Paralos as far as to the mountain Laurius where the Athenians had silver mines, and first wasted that part of it which looketh towards Peloponnesus and then that also which lieth toward Andros and Euboea.
And Pericles, who was also then general, was still of the same mind he was of in the former invasion, that the Athenians ought not to go out against them to battle.
Whilst they were yet in the plain and before they entered into the maritime country, he furnished a hundred galleys to go about Peloponnesus and, as soon as they were ready, put to sea.
In these galleys he had four thousand men of arms, and in vessels then purposely first made to carry horses, three hundred horsemen.
The Chians and Lesbians joined likewise with him with fifty galleys. This fleet of the Athenians, when it set forth, left the Peloponnesians still in Paralia;
and coming before Epidaurus, a city of Peloponnesus, they wasted much of the country thereabout and assaulting the city had a hope to take it, though it succeeded not.
Leaving Epidaurus, they wasted the territories about of Troezene, Halias, and Hermione, places all on the seacoast of Peloponnesus.
Putting off from hence, they came to Prasiae, a small maritime city of Laconia, and both wasted the territory about it and took and razed the town itself. And having done this, came home and found the Peloponnesians not now in Attica but gone back.
All the while the Peloponnesians were in the territory of the Athenians and the Athenians abroad with their fleet, the sickness, both in the army and city, destroyed many, insomuch as it was said that the Peloponnesians, fearing the sickness (which they knew to be in the city both by fugitives and by seeing the Athenians burying their dead), went the sooner away out of the country.
And yet they stayed there longer in this invasion than they had done anytime before and wasted even the whole territory, for they continued in Attica almost forty days.
The same summer Agnon the son of Nicias and Cleopompus the son of Clinias, who were joint commanders with Pericles with that army which he had employed before, went presently and made war upon the Chalcideans of Thrace and against Potidaea which was yet besieged.
Arriving, they presently applied engines and tried all means possible to take it, but neither the taking of the city nor anything else succeeded worthy so great preparation. For the sickness coming amongst them afflicted them mightily indeed and even devoured the army. And the Athenian soldiers which were there before and in health catched the sickness from those that came with Agnon. As for Phormio and his sixteen hundred, they were not now amongst the Chalcideans.
And Agnon therefore came back with his fleet, having of four thousand men in less than forty days lost one thousand and fifty of the plague. But the soldiers that were there before stayed upon the place and continued the siege of Potidaea.
After the second invasion of the Peloponnesians the Athenians, having their fields now the second time wasted and both the sickness and war falling upon them at once, changed their minds and accused Pericles, as if by his means they had been brought into these calamities, and desired earnestly to compound with the Lacedaemonians, to whom also they sent certain ambassadors, but they returned without effect.
And being then at their wits' end, they kept a stir at Pericles.
And he, seeing them vexed with their present calamity and doing all those things which he had before expected, called an assembly (for he was yet general) with intention to put them again into heart and, assuaging their passion, to reduce their minds to a more calm and less dismayed temper. And standing forth, he spake unto them in this manner:
"Your anger towards me cometh not unlooked for, for the cause of it I know. And I have called this assembly, therefore, to remember you and reprehend you for those things wherein you have either been angry with me or given way to your adversity without reason.
For I am of this opinion, that the public prosperity of the city is better for private men than if the private men themselves were in prosperity and the public wealth in decay.
For a private man, though in good estate, if his country come to ruin, must of necessity be ruined with it; whereas he that miscarrieth in a flourishing commonwealth shall much more easily be preserved.
Since then the commonwealth is able to bear the calamities of private men, and everyone cannot support the calamities of the commonwealth, why should not everyone strive to defend it and not, as you now, astonished with domestic misfortune, forsake the common safety and fall a-censuring both me that counselled the war and yourselves that decreed the same as well as I?