112 THE PLAGUE 



elusion. It has been suggested that it might have been typhus fever, 

 but I think that the greatest probability is in favor of its having been 

 the pneumonic form of the plague. 



The time of the earliest appearance of the plague in Italy is not 

 known. It was certainly quite well established there in the first cen- 

 tury of the Christian era and in all probability this was not the first 

 visitation. The historian, as a rule, confines his descriptions to martial 

 and political events and consequently gives a wholly erroneous idea 

 of true conditions. Gibbon says: "If a man were called upon to fix 

 the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of 

 the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without 

 hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to 

 the accession of Commodus" (from 96 to 180 A. D.). Noah Webster, 

 in his work on epidemics and pestilence, quotes the preceding with the 

 following just comment: 



It is certain that, at this time, the Roman Empire was in its glory, and 

 governed by a series of able and virtuous princes, who made the happiness of 

 their subjects their principal object. But the coloring given to the happiness 

 of this period is far too brilliant. The success of armies and the extent of 

 empire do not constitute exclusively the happiness of nations; and no historian 

 has a title to the character of fidelity, who does not comprehend, in his general 

 description of the state of mankind, moral and physical, as well as political 

 evils. 



Let us make brief inquiry into the diseases of this "most happy 

 and prosperous" period. It was preceded by, it begun in, continued in, 

 and closed in pestilence. That the plague was endemic in Italy at that 

 time and that it developed in epidemic form with each increase in sus- 

 ceptible material there can be no doubt. Of the epidemic of 68 A. D. 

 Tacitus says : 



Houses were filled with dead bodies and the streets with funerals; neither 

 age nor sex were exempt; slaves and plebians were suddenly taken off, amidst 

 the lamentations of their wives and children, who, while they assisted the sick, 

 or mourned the dead, were seized with the disease, and perishing, were burned 

 on the same funeral pyre. To the knights and senators the disease was less 

 mortal, though these also suffered in the common calamity. 



About this time the plague appears to have spread over the whole 

 of Asia, northern Africa and Europe. According to Short, the deaths 



