History of the Peloponnesian War

Thus also have I, according to the prescript of the law, delivered in word what was expedient; and those that are here interred have in fact been already honoured; and further, their children shall be maintained till they be at man's estate at the charge of the city, which hath therein propounded both to these and them that live a profitable garland in their matches of valour. For where the rewards of virtue are greatest, there live the worthiest men.

So now having lamented everyone his own, you may be gone.

Such was the funeral made this winter, which ending, ended the first year of this war.

In the very beginning of summer the Peloponnesians and their confederates, with two-thirds of their forces as before, invaded Attica under the conduct of Archidamus the son of Zeuxidamas, king of Lacedaemon, and after they had encamped themselves, wasted the country about them.

They had not been many days in Attica when the plague first began amongst the Athenians, said also to have seized formerly on divers other parts, as about Lemnos and elsewhere; but so great a plague and mortality of men was never remembered to have happened in any place before.

For at first neither were the physicians able to cure it through ignorance of what it was but died fastest themselves, as being the men that most approached the sick, nor any other art of man availed whatsoever. All supplications to the gods and enquiries of oracles and whatsoever other means they used of that kind proved all unprofitable; insomuch as subdued with the greatness of the evil, they gave them all over.