In the summer during the forty days of its second and longest invasion of Attica, the Spartan army destroyed all the crops that had been spared the previous year. Pericles again insisted that the Athenians should not engage the Spartans in the field, but put himself in command of a hundred ships carrying four thousand hoplites and three hundred cavalry and at the end of June sailed to the Peloponnese. The Athenians landed near Epidaurus but failed to capture the city. After plundering the territories of a number of towns on the coast of the Peloponnese, Pericles withdrew from these waters and sent this force to Potidaea under Hagnon, son of Nicias of Steiris.
Thucydides tells us that a few days after the invasion began, a plague (its name is unknown to us) broke out in Athens. It is said to have started in Ethiopia, travelled to Egypt and then been carried by ships to Piraeus and Athens. The hot summer and the overcrowding of the city due to the influx of people from the country created the conditions for the rapid transmission of the disease. Approximately one-third of the people died, including about 300 of 1000 cavalry and about 4400 of 11,000 hoplites. During the expedition to Epidaurus many of the soldiers fell ill. In the summer these Athenian troops led by Hagnon arrived at Potidaea to assist fellow soldiers already there, but they only succeeded in infecting them. The plague raged in Attica for the next year and a half and then recurred briefly in 427 BC. It is calculated that it eventually killed one fourth of the population, perhaps 50,000 people.
The Athenian demes had elected Pericles to the office of strategos every single year since 444/3 BC. After these disasters he was decried by the Athenians on all sides as being responsible for their miseries. Envoys were sent with overtures of peace to Sparta. When they returned without a favourable answer Pericles was deposed from his position as strategos and fined. In 429 BC, however, the Athenians not only forgave Pericles but also re-elected him as strategos.
In the late summer the Spartans attacked Zacynthus, an island off Elis and an ally of Athens, with a hundred triremes and a thousand hoplites, commanded by the navarch Cnemus. Their purpose was to protect the western Peloponnese and their allies in the northwest by depriving Athens of its important bases in the region. But the Spartans failed to take the city and sailed home. On the mainland an attack by Ambracians on Athens’ ally Amphilochian Argos was also unsuccessful. The Athenians responded to these actions by sending twenty ships round the Peloponnese, under the command of Phormion, to be stationed at Naupactus and to watch for movement in and out of the city of Corinth. During the winter the supplies at Potidaea finally came to an end. The people agreed to capitulate provided that they were allowed free passage from the city. They were allowed to depart and they found refuge with their allies, the Chalcidians and the Bottiaeans, but the revolt still continued in the Chalcidice Peninsula. The Athenians later resettled Potidaea with their own colonists.
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