114 THE PLAGUE 



plagues, a species of locusts ravaging the fields; in short, every calamity that 

 can be conceived to afflict and torment man scourged the human race during 

 his administration. 



The physician and historian, Procopius, in his account of the great 

 pestilence in the reign of Justinian "emulated the skill and diligence 

 of Thucydides in the description of the plague at Athens." Of this 

 epidemic Gibbon says: 



In time its first malignancy was abated and dispersed; the disease alternately 

 languished and revived; but it was not till the end of a calamitous period of 

 fifty-two years, that mankind recovered their health, and the air resumed its 

 pure and salubrious quality. No facts have been preserved to sustain an account, 

 or even a conjecture, of the numbers that perished in this extraordinary mor- 

 tality. I only find that during three months, four and at length ten thousand 

 persons died each day at Constantinople, that many cities of the east were left 

 vacant, and that in several districts of Italy, the harvest and the vintage withered 

 on the ground. The triple scourge of war, pestilence and famine afflicted the 

 subjects of Justinian, and his reign is disgraced by a visible decrease of the 

 human species, which has never been replaced in some of the fairest countries 

 of the globe. 



This epidemic spread over the whole of Europe and it took more 

 than a century to reach England, where "it fabled long after in prose 

 and verse as the great plague of Cadwalader's time." Then for quite 

 a thousand years it reaped its periodic harvests as often as immunity 

 was lost in new generations. 



In the fourth century the seat of government was removed to 

 Byzantium. It is probable that this change was, in part at least, 

 determined by the insalubrity of Italy. Early in the fifth century 

 Rome was pillaged, but the real conquerors of Rome were not the 

 Goths and Vandals, but malaria and the plague. Disease continued 

 to devastate Italy. Creighton says : 



About the year 668 the English archbishop-elect, Vighard, having come to 

 Rome to get his election confirmed by the pope, Vitalanius, was soon after his 

 arrival cut off by the pestilence with almost all who had gone with him. Twelve 

 years after, in 680, there was another severe pestilence in the months of July, 

 August and September, causing a great mortality at Rome and such a panic 

 at Pavia that the inhabitants fled to the mountains. In 746 a pestilence is said 

 to have advanced from Sicily and Calabria and to have made such devastation 

 in Rome that there were houses without a single inhabitant left. 



