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On returning to
Athens, the same armament was immediately conducted under Agnon and
Cleopompus, to press the siege of Potidaea, 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 aggressive
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 fewer than one thousand and fifty died in the
short space of forty days. The armament was brought back in this
distressed condition to Athens, while the reduction of Potidaea was left
as before, to the slow course of blockade.
On returning from the expedition against Peloponnesus, Pericles found
his countrymen almost distracted with their manifold sufferings.


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