History of the Peloponnesian War

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.