Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/186

 164 KTbrORY OF GREECE was immediately conducted, under Agnon and Kleopompus. t< press the siege of Potidoea, the blockade of which still continued without any visible progress. On arriving there, an attack was made on the walls by battering engines, and by the other aggres- sive methods then practised ; but nothing whatever was achieved. In fact, the armament became incompetent for all serious effort, from the aggravated character which the distemper here assumed, communicated by the soldiers fresh from Athens, even to those who had before been free from it at Potidaea. So frightful was the mortality, that out of the four thousand hoplites under Agnon, no less than ten hundred and fifty died in the short space of forty days. The armament was brought back in this melancholy condition to Athens, while the reduction of Potidaea was left, as before, to the slow course of blockade. 1 On returning from the expedition against Peloponnesus, Per- ikles found his countrymen almost distracted- with their manifold sufferings. Over and above the raging epidemic, they had just gone over Attica and ascertained the devastations committed by the invaders throughout all the territory except the Mara- thonian 3 Tetrapolis and Dekeleia ; districts spared, as we are told, through indulgence founded on an ancient legendary sym- pathy during their long stay of forty days. The rich had found their comfortable mansions and farms, the poor their modest cottages, in the various demes, torn down and ruined. Death, 4 sickness, loss of property, and despair of the future, now ren- dered the Athenians angry and intractable to the last degree ; and they vented their feelings against Perikles, as the cause, not merely of the war, but also of all that they were now enduring. Either with or without his consent, they sent envoys to Sparta to open negotiations for peace, but the Spartans turned a deaf ear to the proposition. This new disappointment rendered them still more furious against Perikles, whose long-standing political enemies now doubtless found strong sympathy in their denuncia- 1 Thucyd. ii, 53-58. * Thucyd. ii, 59. TfrJkoiuv-o ru.q yvufiac. 3 Diodor.xii,45; Ister ap. Schol. ad Soph. CEdip. Colon. 689; Herodot. ix. 4 Thucyd. ii, 65. 'O HEV (Jiy/uof, on uif k"hacodvuv 6pfiu/ievoc, tOTeprjTO ical rovruv oi 6e dvvarol, KO.?.<L KTTJftara /tar"; ryv x&pav oiKodoutaif re *ai