that if they warred with all their power, theyshould have the victory, and that the God himself would taketheir 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.