TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
The long-form s ( ſ ) in the original text has been replaced bythe modern s in this etext.
A few obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have beencorrected after careful comparison with other occurrences withinthe text and consultation of external sources.
The cover image was created by the transcriberand is placed in the public domain.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
Let this Book be Printed.
Roger L’Estrange.
March 28.
1665.
THE
Plague of Athens,
Which hapned in the
SECOND YEAR
OF THE
Peloponnesian Warre.
First described in Greek by Thucydides;
Then in Latin by Lucretius.
Now attempted in English,
By Tho. Sprat.
LONDON,
Printed by E. C. for Henry Brome, at the Gun in
Ivy-lane, 1665.
To my Worthy and Learned Friend,
Dr. Walter Pope, late Proctor of
the University of Oxford.
SIR,
I Know not what pleasure you could take in bestowingyour commands so unprofitably, unless it be that forwhich Nature sometimes cherishes and allows Monsters,The love of Variety. This onely delight you will receiveby turning over this rude and unpolisht Copy, andcomparing it with my excellent Patterns, the Greek andLatin. By this you will see how much a noble Subject ischang’d and disfigured by an ill hand, and what reasonAlexander had to forbid his Picture to be drawn but bysome celebrated Pencil. In Greek Thucydides so well and solively expresses it, that I know not which is more a Poem,his description, or that of Lucretius. Though it must besaid, that the Historian had a vast advantage over the Poet;He having been present on the place, and assaulted by thedisease himself, had the horror familiar to his Eyes, and allthe shapes of the misery still remaining on his mind, whichmust needs make a great impression on his Pen and Fancie.Whereas the Poet was forced to allow his foot-steps,and onely work on that matter he allow’d him. This Ispeak, because it may in some measure too excuse my owndefects: For being so far remov’d from the place where