1 4 History of A nimal Plag2Lcs. 



B.C. 430. The plague of Athens, so lucidly described b) 

 Thucydides, occurred during the second year of the Peloponnesian 

 war. Thucydides and Lucretius mention that birds were rare, dogs 

 died, and that rapacious animals would not devour the bodies of 

 the dead. ' For the same reason there came a disease to cattle, also 

 sickness to bleating flocks. And although many unburied bodies 

 lay on the ground, yet the birds and beasts of prey either kept at 

 a distance to escape the stench, or when they had eaten of them 

 they began to grow weak as death approached. Neither did 

 any birds rashly appear in these lands, nor did the wild beasts 

 leave their haunts in the woods at night, for they began to 

 languish from the pestilence and die. But, foremost of all, the 

 faithful doo; was attacked, taintinsr the air in the hio:hwavs with 

 his disease, while the ruthless poison drove the sickening spirit 

 from every limb.' ^ 



Thucydides gives us the supposed cause. *^As they (the 

 Athenians) had no houses, but dwelt in booths all the summer 

 season, and in which there was scarcely room to breathe, the 

 pestilence destroyed with the greatest confusion ; so that they 

 lay together in heaps, the dying upon the dead, and the dead 

 upon the dying. They were tumbling one over the other in the 

 public streets, or lay expiring round every fountain, whither they 

 had crept to assuage the intolerable thirst which was consuming 

 them. The temples of which they had taken possession were 



full of the dead bodies of those who had expired there For 



as this distemper was in general virulent beyond expression, and 

 its every part more grievous than had yet fallen to the lot of 

 human nature, so in one particular feature it appeared to be 

 none of the natural infirmities of man, since the birds and beasts 

 that prey on human flesh either never approached the dead 

 bodies, of which many lay uninterred, or certainly perished if 

 they ever tasted it. One proof of this is the total disappearance 

 at that time of such birds, for not one was to be seen either in 

 any other place or near the carcases. But the dogs, because 

 of their constant familiarity with man, afforded a more notorious 

 proof of this event.' ^ 



' Lucretius. Lib. vi. 1 123, et seq. ^ Thucydides. Bello Pclop. ii. 49. 



