“Now were men at variance about the word, some saying it was not Λοιμὸς (i. e. the Plague), that was by the ancients mentioned in that verse, but Λιμὸς (i.e. Famine). But upon the present occasion the word Λοιμὸς deservedly obtained. For as men suffered, so they made the verse to say. And I think, if after this there shall ever come another Doric war, and with it a famine, they are like to recite the verse accordingly. There was also reported by such as knew, a certain answer given by the oracle to the Lacedæmonians, when they inquired whether they should make this war or not, ‘that if they warred with all their power, they should have the victory, and that the god[99] himself would take their parts;’ and thereupon they thought the present misery to be a fulfilling of that prophecy. The Peloponnesians were no sooner entered Attica, but the sickness presently began, ‘and never came into Peloponnesus, to speak of, but reigned principally in Athens, and in such other places afterwards as were most populous. And thus much of this disease.[100]
The disease remitted during the winter, but in the following summer broke out again, and carried off Pericles among its victims. In that one death Athens received more irretrievable injury than from the loss of all the multitude who perished, for he was the last of that succession of statesmen who founded and matured her greatness. Hitherto the directors, the virtual sovereigns of the state,[101] had been truly demagogues: they led, those who succeeded to their influence were led by, the people, and preserved their power by yielding to and encouraging passions which they ought to have controlled.[102] Two years later the plague broke out again. Altogether it carried off 4400 heavy armed soldiers, and 300 horsemen; that is, 4700 male citizens in the prime of life, between the ages fixed by law as the limits of active service, of the highest and middle ranks alone, besides an innumerable multitude of other persons.[103]
Aristophanes and Plato furnish abundant evidence, if farther evidence were necessary, that about this time a great change did take place in the manners and morals of the Athenians. The reader will find this subject, which is one of great interest, and would require a separate chapter for its investigation, noticed in our introductory chapter, and treated at considerable length in the preliminary discourse to Mitchell’s Aristophanes there quoted. We here allude to it only to guard against the supposition that this total demoralization was brought about in the short space of a few months by the influence of terror and recklessness: a thing not in itself probable, not confirmed by the experience of similar visitations, and not the necessary meaning of the assertion, that “the licentiousness of the city flowed at first from this disease.” This was the crisis of the change; the pestilence determined the victory of an evil influence which had long been spreading, and marked the period from which that change was to be dated. Hitherto the open practice of the new doctrines had been repressed by laws, and by the received opinion of good and evil; but now that the insecurity of life and property banished thought of the future, by alike extinguishing both hope and fear, “for no man expected that his life would last till he received punishment of his crimes by judgment,” and that the general disorder and distress removed all check of public opinion, the doctrines of the sophists sprung at once to maturity, and bore abundant fruit after their kind.[104]
Another circumstance, apparently more trivial, is not unlikely to have had considerable effect—the collection of the whole Athenian people within the walls. A proverb tells us that idleness is the mother of all vice; and few things are more unfavourable to moral habits than the crowding of a large population within inconveniently narrow bounds. Both these sources of evil were united in Athens. The inconvenience experienced by the people for want of accommodation has been already described. For their employments, agriculture was the only business to which a free Athenian would personally apply himself, although the wealthy carried on manufactures by means of slaves; and from the practice of agriculture the Athenians were now entirely cut off. In consequence, a great number of families had no support whatever, except what they derived from the public revenue, in the form of sacrifices, a large part of which was distributed among the people, public entertainments, and the pay for attending the public meetings and the courts of justice. Needy men readily embrace doctrines which place the property of others at their disposal; and thus the nation was already half demoralized when the plague broke out, and removed the fear of present punishment without enforcing that of future retribution. Temptation and bad example soon completed the work.
Procopius, a Greek historian of the sixth century, was a witness, and has left a minute description of the great plague which in the reign of Justinian ravaged nearly the whole of the known world. It is evidently modelled upon the celebrated passage in Thucydides which we have just extracted. The most remarkable circumstance in this pestilence is its extraordinary length. When Evagrius of Antioch wrote his Ecclesiastical History it had lasted fifty-two years, with alternate fits of relaxation and vigour; but during this long period the earth was never wholly free from its ravages.
“About this time a pestilence occurred, which almost put an end to the human race. Now it is always probable that daring men will propose some reason to explain those things which come down on us direct from heaven, as persons skilled in such matters love to deal in wonderful causes beyond man’s discovery, and to shape strange schemes of natural philosophy; knowing that what they utter is not sound, but satisfied if they can cheat the vulgar into believing it. But for this particular calamity we can in no way account, either in word or thought, except by referring it to God. For it fell on no particular portion of the earth, nor race of men, nor was it confined to any season of the year, which things might have given some pretence for thinking it of natural origin, but spread over all the earth, and ravaged all nations, the most unlike and opposite to each other, sparing neither constitution nor age. For whether men differed in place of abode, or in diet, or temperament, or in anything else in which they do differ from each other, in this disease the variance availed nothing; and it fell on some in summer, on others in winter, and on others at the other seasons. Let would-be philosophers and speculators upon lofty things speak, then, each according to his own opinion. I proceed to show whence this disease came, and how it operated to destroy men.
“It began in Egypt, among the inhabitants of Pelusium, and, dividing, spread on one side to Alexandria and the rest of Egypt, and on the other into Palestine, and from thence over the whole earth, advancing by its proper way and at its proper season; for it seemed to advance according to a prescribed plan, and to abide in every country for an appointed time, sparing none as it passed, and extending on either side to the bounds of the habitable world, as if apprehensive lest any recess should escape. For it missed no island, no cave, no mountain summit inhabited by man; or if it did, and spared, or laid its hand but lightly on the dwellers there, then it returned at a later time, and never touching their neighbours, whom before it had attacked most bitterly, quitted not that spot until the measure of the dead was fully and justly made up,[105] proportionate to the mortality of the neighbourhood in the former season. The disease always began at the sea-side, and spread thence into the interior. It reached Constantinople, where I then happened to be, at midsummer in the second year of its progress. The manner of its attack was this: visions of spirits,[106] in all sorts of human shapes, were seen. The sufferers thought they met a man, who struck them, and were taken ill the same moment that they saw the spectre. At first men strove to turn aside these spirits, by uttering the holiest names, and hallowing themselves as best they could; but they gained nothing by this, for very many who fled even to the churches, perished there; and at last, even when their friends called them, they would not attend, but shut themselves up at home, and pretended not to hear, though their very doors were yielding to the knocking; so terrified were they, lest it should be some spirit.[107] Others again were taken ill in a different way, and saw some one in a dream, who stood over them and struck them; or heard a warning voice, that they were numbered with the dead. But most fell sick in the following manner, unwarned of their fate either by sleeping or waking visions. They felt feverish on first rising, or while walking or otherwise employed. There was no change in colour, no heat, as when fever supervenes, no inflammation; but until evening the fever was so slight that it suggested no idea of danger, either to the patient or the physician; and indeed none that were ill of it expected to die. But on that day, or the next, or sometimes a few days after, the buboe appeared, mostly in the groin, but in the arm-pit also, or behind the ears, or sometimes on the thighs.
“Thus far the course of the disease was alike in all; for the rest, I cannot tell whether the difference of symptoms arose from difference of constitutions, or is referable to the will alone of Him who sent it. For some fell into a deep stupor, others into raving madness, and each suffered agreeably to the kind of his disorder. For those who were attacked by stupor, forgetting everything to which they were accustomed, seemed always asleep. And if any person were in attendance on them, from time to time they took food; but some who were neglected perished for want of food. The maniacs, on the contrary, were afflicted by sleepiness, and continual apparitions, which attacked them, as they thought, meaning to kill them; so that they raised a great disturbance, and made horrid cries, endeavouring to escape. And their attendants, worn by constant labour, suffered most severely, insomuch that men pitied them no less than those who were ill, not from any danger of contagion[108] (for no physician nor other person fell sick from contact with the sick or dead; since many employed constantly in nursing or burying, against all expectations, survived this service, and many, for whose illness no cause could be discovered, died at once), but on account of their hard labour did they pity them. For it was necessary to replace the patients who would throw themselves out of bed, and roll on the floor, and to drive and hale them back as often as they tried to rush out of the house; and such as could find water wanted to plunge in, not from desire to drink, for they went mostly to the sea, but at the suggestion of a disordered mind.[109] And there was also much trouble in administering food, to which they were very adverse. Many died of starvation, or by throwing themselves down heights. Mortification of the buboes carried off such as experienced neither stupor nor frenzy, and they died at last exhausted by agony. It would be supposed that the others underwent equal torture; but this was not so, the mental disease, however slight, precluding all sensation of pain.
“The physicians, embarrassed by their unacquaintance with the forms of the disease, and thinking that the element of it was secreted in the buboes, determined to examine the dead bodies; and opening these tumours, found in them something in the likeness of a coal. Some died immediately, some after many days; some threw out black pustules, the size of a lentil, all over their bodies, and these lived not one day longer, but died on the instant. Many were carried off at once by vomiting blood. One thing I have to observe, that the most eminent physicians predicted the death of many, who soon after, against all expectations, had nothing ailing, and persisted that many would live, who at that moment were on the point of dissolution. Thus, throughout the disease, there was nothing for which human reason could account,[110] but in almost every instance some unlooked-for event occurred. The bath did good to some, and no less harm to others. Many who were neglected, died; others unexpectedly survived. Medical treatment had contradictory effects on those who tried it; and, in brief, the wit of man found no means of safety, either to ward off or to overcome the evil, but its attack was without apparent cause, and the recovery spontaneous.
“The disease lasted in Constantinople four months, and was at its height for three. At first the number of dead was little greater than ordinary; then the evil increased till it amounted to 5000 daily, and at last to 10,000, and even more. At first every man took care himself to bury those in his household, casting them secretly, or by open force, into other persons’ tombs; but at last all was confusion. For slaves remained without masters; and men, formerly rich and happy, were left without common attendance by the sickness and death of their slaves; and many houses were quite emptied of inhabitants: so that some remained many days without burial, because there were no persons that knew them. When the Emperor heard of this, he sent money and soldiers from the palace, and ordered Theodorus, an officer called by the Latins the Referendary, who received all petitions addressed to the Emperor, and signified his pleasure with respect to them, to take charge of this matter; so that they whose houses were not yet entirely desolated performed the funeral rites of their own connexions; and Theodorus, at the imperial expense, and partly also at his own, buried those bodies that had none to care for them. But when the tombs that were already constructed were filled with corpses, trenches were dug all about the city, into which every one cast the dead as he could, and went away; until the grave-diggers, wearied out, took off the roofs of the towers on the wall of the district called Sukai,[111] into which they cast the bodies promiscuously, and when they were full replaced the roofs. The fetid smell from hence reached the city, and much annoyed the inhabitants, especially when the wind lay in that quarter.