Book 2
55.1
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.
55.2
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.
56.1
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.
56.2
In these galleys he had four thousand men of arms, and in vessels then purposely first made to carry horses, three hundred horsemen.
56.3
The Chians and Lesbians joined likewise with him with fifty galleys. This fleet of the Athenians, when it set forth, left the Peloponnesians still in Paralia;
56.4
and coming before Epidaurus, a city of Peloponnesus, they wasted much of the country thereabout and assaulting the city had a hope to take it, though it succeeded not.
56.5
Leaving Epidaurus, they wasted the territories about of Troezene, Halias, and Hermione, places all on the seacoast of Peloponnesus.
56.6
Putting off from hence, they came to Prasiae, a small maritime city of Laconia, and both wasted the territory about it and took and razed the town itself. And having done this, came home and found the Peloponnesians not now in Attica but gone back.
57.1
All the while the Peloponnesians were in the territory of the Athenians and the Athenians abroad with their fleet, the sickness, both in the army and city, destroyed many, insomuch as it was said that the Peloponnesians, fearing the sickness (which they knew to be in the city both by fugitives and by seeing the Athenians burying their dead), went the sooner away out of the country.
