History of the Peloponnesian War

The disease, then, to pass over many various points of peculiarity, as it happened to be different in one ease from another, was in its general nature such as I have described. And no other of those to which they were accustomed afflicted them besides this at that time; or whatever there was, it ended in this. And [of those who were seized by it] some died in neglect, others in the midst of every attention.

And there was no one settled remedy, so to speak, by applying which they were to give them relief; for what did good to one, did harm to another. And no constitution showed itself fortified against it, in point either of strength or weakness;

but it seized on all alike, even those that were treated with all possible regard to diet.

But the most dreadful part of the whole calamity was the dejection felt whenever any one found himself sickening, (for by immediately falling into a feeling of despair, they abandoned themselves much more certainly to the disease, and did not resist it,) and the fact of their being charged with infection from attending on one another, and so dying like sheep. And it was this that caused the greatest mortality amongst them;

for if through fear they were unwilling to visit each other, they perished from being deserted, and many houses were emptied for want of some one to attend to the sufferers; or if they did visit them, they met their death, and especially such as made any pretensions to goodness; for through a feeling of shame they were unsparing of themselves, in going into their friends' houses [when deserted by all others]; since even the members of the family were at length worn out by the very moanings of the dying, [*]( Or, by lamenting for the dying. See Arnold's note.) and were overcome by their excessive misery.

Still more, however, than even these, did such as had escaped the disorder show pity for the dying and the suffering, both from their previous knowledge of what it was, and from their being now in no fear of it themselves; for it never seized the same person twice, so as to prove actually fatal. And such persons were felicitated by others; and themselves, in the excess of their present joy, entertained for the future also, to a certain degree, a vain hope that they would never now be carried off even by any other disease.