Athens was in a piteous state from the sickness, which had cut off hosts of people of all ranks.  It lasted seven or nine days in each, and seems to have been a malignant fever.  Pericles lost his eldest son, his sister, and almost all his dearest friends in it; but still he went about calm, grave, and resolute, keeping up the hopes and patience of the Athenians.  Then his youngest and last son died of the same sickness, and when the time came for placing the funeral garland on his head, Pericles broke down, and wept and sobbed aloud.  Shortly after, he fell sick himself, and lingered much longer than was usual with sufferers from the plague.  Once, when his friends came in, he showed them a charm which the women had hung round his neck, and, smiling, asked them whether his enduring such folly did not show that he must be very ill indeed.  Soon after, when he was sinking away, and they thought him insensible, they began to talk of the noble deeds he had done, his speeches, his wisdom and learning, and his buildings: “he had found Athens of brick,” they said, “and had left her of marble.”  Suddenly the sick man raised himself in his bed, and said, “I wonder you praise these things in me.  They were as much owing to fortune as to anything else; and yet you leave out what is my special honour, namely, that I never caused any fellow-citizen to put on mourning.”  So died this great man, in 429, the third year of the Peloponnesian war.