ABSTRACT
I. As soon as the spring commenced, the Peloponnesians again appeared in Attica under the command of Archidamus. After ravaging the plain of
Attica, destroying the fruit trees1 and setting fire to the granaries, they marched on to the silver-mines of Laurion, and con-
tinued the work of devastation even to the plain of Marathon with its four burghs. These, however, they spared in memory of the tradition which consecrated the place and its vicinity to the refuge of the Heraclidæ in their march against Eurystheus. For forty days they remained in Attica, and might still longer have desolated the country and harassed the citizens, if a more deadly enemy had not now appeared, which struck terror even to the invaders, and before which the tide of war itself rolled backward from the land. A pestilence had seized on Athens. This Horrible Disease was said to have begun in Æthiopia beyond Egypt,2 to have spread thence over Egypt, Libya, and a considerable portion of the dominions of the Persian king, to have ravaged Lemnos and the neighbouring isles, and finally to have burst forth suddenly in the crowded port of the Athenian Piræus-whence it rapidly spread to the upper city.
