196 Epidemics. 



ness ; but it seized on all alike, even those that were treated 

 with all possible regard to diet. But the most dreadful part 

 of the whole calamity was the dejection felt whenever any 

 one found himself sickening (for by immediately falling into 

 a feeling of despair, they abandoned themselves much more 

 certainly to the disease, and did not resist it), and the fact of 

 their being charged with infection from attending on one 

 another, and so dying like sheep. And it was this that 

 caused the greatest mortality amongst them ; for if through 

 fear they were unwilling to visit each other, they perished 

 from being deserted, and many houses were emptied for 

 want of some one to attend to the sufferers ; or if they did 

 visit them, they met their death, and especially such as made 

 any pretensions to goodness ; for through a feeling of shame 

 they were unsparing of themselves, in going into their friends* 

 houses [when deserted by all others] ; since even the mem- 

 bers of the family were at length worn out by the very 

 moanings of the dying,* and were overcome by their ex- 

 cessive misery. Still more, however, than even these, did 

 such as had escaped the disorder show pity for the dying and 

 the suffering, both from their previous knowledge of what it 

 was, and from their being now in no fear of it themselves ; 

 for it never seized the same person twice, so as to prove 

 actually fatal. And such persons were felicitated by others ; 

 and themselves, in the excess of their present joy, enter- 

 tained for the future also, to a certain degree, a vain hope 

 that they would never now be carried off even by any other 

 disease. 



" In addition to the original calamity, what oppressed them 

 still more was the crowding into the city from the country, 

 especially the new comers. For as they had no houses, but 

 lived in stifling cabins at the hot season of the year, the 

 mortality amongst them spread without restraint ; bodies 

 lying on one another in the death-agony, and half-dead 

 creatures rolling about in the streets and round all the foun- 

 tains, in their longing for water. The sacred places also in 

 which they had quartered themselves, were full of the corpses 

 of those that died there in them ; for in the surpassing violence 

 of the calamity, men, not knowing what was to become of 

 them, came to disregard everything, both sacred and profane, 

 alike. And all the laws were violated which they before ob- 

 served respecting burials ; and they buried them as each one 



* Or, " by lamenting for the dying." See Arnold's note. 



