# The Peloponnesian War 1.15-18

Greek and Roman Historians, The Peloponnesian War, Lines 1.15-1.18. Latin.

Canonical: https://interlinea.aeterna-institute.org/library/latin/greek-and-roman-historians/the-peloponnesian-war/1.15

12.1.4. Losses through Spartan invasions
The difficulty in carrying out Pericles' strategy for winning the war was that it required the many Athenians who resided outside the urban center to abandon their homes and fields to the depredations of the Spartan army during its regular invasions of Attica. As Thucydides reports, people hated coming in from the countryside where "most Athenians were born and bred; they grumbled at having to move their entire households [into Athens] ... , abandoning their normal way of life and leaving behind what they regarded as their true city." When in 431 B.C. the Spartans invaded Attica for the first time and began to destroy property in the countryside, the country dwellers of Attica became enraged as, standing in safety on Athens' walls, they watched the smoke rise from their property as the Spartans put it to the torch. Pericles only barely managed to stop the citizen militia from rushing out despite the odds to take on the Spartan hoplites. The Spartan army returned home after about a month in Attica because it lacked the structure for resupply over a longer period and could not risk being away from Sparta too long for fear of helot revolt. For these reasons, the annual invasions of Attica that the Spartans sent in the early years of the war never lasted longer than forty days. Even in this short time, however, the Spartan army could inflict losses on the Athenian countryside that were felt very keenly by the Athenians holed up in their walled city.
12.1.5. The effects of epidemic
The innate unpredictability of war undermined Pericles' strategy, especially as an epidemic disease ravaged Athens' population for several years beginning in 430 B.C. The disease struck while the Athenians were jammed together in unsanitary conditions to escape Spartan attack behind their walls. The symptoms were gruesome: vomiting, convulsions, painful sores, uncontrollable diarrhea, and fever and thirst so extreme that sufferers threw themselves into cisterns vainly hoping to find relief in the cold water. The rate of mortality was so high it crippled Athenian ability to man the naval expeditions Pericles' wartime strategy demanded. Pericles himself died of the disease in 429 B.C. He apparently had not anticipated the damage to Athens which the loss of his firm leadership could mean. The epidemic also seriously hampered the war effort by destroying Athenian confidence in their relationship with the gods." As far as the gods were concerned, it seemed not to matter whether one worshipped them or not because the good and the bad were dying indiscriminately," was Thucydides' description of the population's attitude at the height of the epidemic.

---

Greek and Roman Historians, The Peloponnesian War. Text: The Latin Library (thelatinlibrary.com), used with permission. Changes: HTML markup removed and the text divided into reading sections by Interlinea.
License: Used with permission (https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/about.html). Source: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/historians/narrative/peloponnesianwar.html.