History of the Peloponnesian War

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: