322 THUCYDIDES
tongue were quickly suffused with blood, and the breath became unnatural and fetid. There followed sneezing and hoarseness ; in a short time the disorder, accompanied by a violent cough, reached the chest ; then fastening lower down, it would move the stomach and bring on all the vomits of bile to which physicians have ever given names ; and they were very distressing. An ineffectual retching, producing violent convulsions, attacked most of the sufferers ; some as soon as the previous symptoms had abated, others not until long afterwards. The body externally was not so very hot to the touch, nor yet pale ; it was of a livid color in- clining to red, and breaking out in pustules and ulcers. But the internal fever was intense ; the sufferers could not bear to have on them even the finest linen gar- ment ; they insisted on being naked, and there was nothing which they longed for more eagerly than to throw themselves into cold water. And many of those who had no one to look after them actually plunged into the cisterns, for they were tormented by unceasing thirst, which was not in the least assuaged whether they drank little or much. They could not sleep ; a restlessness which was intolerable never left them. While the disease was at its height the body, instead of wasting away, held out amid these sufferings in a marvellous manner, and either they died on the seventh or ninth day, not of weakness, for their strength was not exhausted, but of internal fever, which was the end of most ; or, if they survived, then the disease descended into the bowels and there produced violent ulceration ; severe diarrhoea at the same time set in, and at a later stage caused exhaustion, which finally, with few exceptions, carried them off. For the dis- order which had originally settled in the head passed
