In the midst of this dreadful commotion, we find the pestilence contributing its share to the common work of desolation. In Alexandria in Egypt, says Dionysius, bishop of that place, “fury and discord raged to such a degree, that it was more easy to pass from the east to the remotest provinces of the west, than from one place of Alexandria to another. The inhabitants had no intercourse but by letters, which were with the utmost difficulty conveyed from one friend to another. The port resembled the shores of the Red Sea strewed with the carcases of the drowned Egyptians: the sea was dyed with blood, and the Nile choked up with dead bodies. The war was attended with a general famine, and the famine with a dreadful plague, which daily swept off great numbers of people, insomuch that there were then in Alexandria fewer inhabitants, from the age of fourteen to that of eighty, than there used to be from forty to seventy.” It was not in Egypt alone that this calamity prevailed. It raged with great violence in Greece, and at Rome itself; where, for some time, it carried off five thousand persons a day. Many terrible phenomena of nature took place at the same time. The sun was overcast with thick clouds, and great darkness took place for several days, attended with a violent earthquake, and loud claps of thunder, not in the air, but in the bowels of the earth, which opened in several places and swallowed up great numbers of people in their habitations. The sea, swelling beyond measure, broke in upon the continent, and drowned whole cities.[36]
At last the civil commotions were settled by the accession of Claudius to the empire in 268. He found the Roman force so exhausted, that, when marching against the Goths, he wrote to the senate in the following terms: “If I should not be attended with success, you will remember that I fight after the reign of Gallienus. The whole empire is quite spent and exhausted, partly by him, and partly by the many tyrants who, during his reign, usurped the sovereignty, and laid waste our provinces. We want even shields, swords and spears.” In this miserable plight, however, he gained a most extraordinary victory; three hundred thousand of the enemy being killed or taken. But, while Claudius thus carried on the work of death successfully against the barbarians, he was attacked from a quarter where he could make no resistance: a violent plague broke out in his army, and carried off himself and a vast number of his men.
The dreadful defeat given to the Goths did not long preserve the tranquillity of the empire. New invasions took place, and new massacres ensued. At last, on the accession of Dioclesian to the empire, it was thought proper, on account of the present emergences, to divide such wide-extended territories into four parts, to be governed by four emperors of equal authority. By the activity and valour of these, particularly of one of them, named Galerius, the northern barbarians were repressed, and the Persians reduced so low, that they were obliged to yield up a great part of their territories; and it is said that their country might even have been reduced to a Roman province, had the emperor so inclined. We know not whether, in his eastern expedition, the Roman army received any infection, nor do we hear of any plague breaking out in it; but we are told that Galerius himself died of an uncommon distemper; an ulcer, attended with mortifications, violent pains, and the production of an infinite number of vermin, which devoured and tormented him day and night. This distemper, however, seems rather to have been a cancer than a pestilential disorder, as he laboured under it for more than a year. After his death, dreadful wars continued, both by reason of the incursions of barbarians, and the contests of those who enjoyed, or wished to enjoy, the empire. The eastern parts, however, had for some time kept free from pestilential contagion; of which the christian writers say, that Maximin, who reigned there, had made his boast; and, being a heathen, ascribed it to the care he took of preserving the worship of the gods. But, if this was really the case, he soon found his gods unable to protect him; for, soon after the accession of Constantine the great, and his embracing christianity, the dominions of Maximin were afflicted with famine accompanied with pestilence, and that attended by symptoms of a most extraordinary nature; particularly ulcers about the eyes, which rendered multitudes of those who were infected with the distemper totally blind. The christians did not fail to ascribe this plague to the sins of Maximin; but it must be observed, that to his other sins he had added that of involving himself in a violent war, during which the pestilence broke out, and which probably was one of the causes of it. We may likewise observe, that if the sins of Maximin brought on the plague, the piety of Constantine could not keep it off; since we find that in the year 332, a considerable time after the death of Maximin, the territories of Constantine were ravaged by a dreadful plague, and the famine was so severe, that, at Antioch, wheat was sold at four hundred pieces of silver per bushel. The distemper which put an end to the life of Maximin himself was indeed so extraordinary, that we may reasonably excuse those who called it a judgment sent directly from heaven. His eyes and tongue are said to have putrefied; “an invisible fire was kindled in his bowels, which, being attended with unrelenting torments, reduced him in a few days to a perfect skeleton; his whole body was covered over with a kind of leprosy, and devoured by swarms of vermin; he could not be prevailed upon to take any nourishment, but greedily swallowed handfuls of earth, as if he had hoped by that means to assuage his pains, and allay the hunger with which he was tormented without intermission.”[37] All this, we are told, was the effect of poison, which he had swallowed in despair, after being defeated in battle; but the symptoms are unaccountable.
After the death of Constantine, the empire being again parted, civil dissensions took place; the northern barbarians and Persians renewed their incursions, and at length the battle of Mursa, between the emperor Constantius and an usurper named Magnentius, destroyed such numbers that the empire no more recovered its former strength. From this time therefore the wars with the barbarians became more and more violent; and, though frequently overcome, the advantage was ultimately on their side. In 361, the first year of the emperor Julian, the pestilence again made its appearance. It was accompanied by many other grievous calamities: Dreadful earthquakes were felt in every province; most of the cities in Palestine, Libya, Sicily and Greece, were overturned. Libanius writes, that not one city in Libya was left standing, and but one in Greece; that Nice was utterly ruined, and Constantinople greatly damaged. The sea, in several places, broke in upon the land, and destroyed whole cities with their inhabitants. At Alexandria, the sea, retiring during an earthquake, returned again with such violence, that it drowned several towns and villages in the neighbourhood. The earthquakes were followed by a famine, and the famine by a pestilence. It was observed by the christian writers, that the famine seemed to follow Julian from place to place: and no wonder that it did so; for he not only had always a large army along with him, which consumed great quantities of provision, but, attempting to remedy the evil by fixing the prices of provisions, he rendered it much worse, as the dealers in corn were thereby tempted to convey it to other places.[38] Indeed this emperor seems to have been inclined to produce famines wherever he went; for, on his entering the territories of the Persians, with whom he was at war, he wasted the country to such a degree, that he could neither subsist nor return; while the enemy, imitating his example, destroyed all before him. The consequence was, that, by the time Julian was killed, the famine raged in the Roman camp to such a degree, that not a single person could have escaped, had not the enemy mercifully granted them peace.
Notwithstanding this dismal situation, we hear of no plague invading the camp of the Romans at that time. The wars, however, continued with great violence; and, in the time of Valentinian, Valens and Gratian, became worse than ever. The dreadful state of the empire in the time of Gratian is thus described by St. Jerom: “The whole country, from Constantinople to the Julian Alps, has been swimming these twenty years in Roman blood. Scythia, Thrace, Macedon, Dardania, Dacia, Thessaly, Achaia, both Epiruses, Dalmatia, both Pannonias, are filled with Goths, Sarmatians, Quadians, Alans, Huns, Vandals, Marcomans, &c. whose avarice nothing has escaped, whose cruelty has been felt by persons of all ranks, ages and conditions.” “What evils, (says Gregory Nazianzen) have we not seen or heard of! Whole countries have been destroyed with fire and sword; many thousand persons of all ranks and ages have been inhumanly massacred; the rivers are still dyed with blood, and the ground covered with heaps of dead bodies.”
In the midst of so great calamities, the pestilence, as an evil of inferior nature, might in many cases pass unnoticed by the historians of the times; nevertheless, even during that distracted period, we find some accounts of it. In 384 we are told of a famine and plague at Antioch; and, in 407, of one in Palestine, said to be occasioned by multitudes of grasshoppers, which even obscured the sun, and turned day into night. After having done incredible mischief, they were thrown by the wind partly into the Red Sea, and partly into the Mediterranean; whence being again cast ashore by the waves, they putrefied, and occasioned a pestilence. Two years after, when Rome had been first besieged by Alaric the Goth, the city was reduced to such straits, that human flesh was publicly sold, and some mothers are said to have devoured their children. This terrible famine was occasioned by the uncultivated state of the country, which had lain waste for several years, by reason of the wars, and the ports of Africa being blocked up by Heraclianus lest an usurper should become emperor; and thus this loyal admiral, for fear that the people should have a bad governor, determined rather that there should be no people to be governed. Notwithstanding this terrible famine, however, we hear of no pestilential disorder taking place; not even after the taking of the city by Alaric, when bloodshed and massacre were added to the other calamities.
All this time the empire, by the incursions of barbarians, by usurpations, civil wars, and the general licentiousness of the people, had been in a situation not to be described. The invasion of the Hunns, a new and more formidable enemy than they had ever experienced, now completed the ruin of the Romans. The whole western part of the empire became one continued scene of carnage and desolation. The common epithet bestowed upon Attila, the king of these barbarians, was, “The Scourge of God, the Destroyer of Armies.” As a specimen of his behaviour, we shall select the account of his taking of Aquileia in 452. That city, “being well fortified, and defended by the flower of the Roman troops, held out, in spite of his utmost efforts, for three months; at the end of which it was taken by assault, pillaged for several days together, and laid in ashes; not a single house being left standing, nor one person alive that fell into the enemy’s hands. The cities of Trevigio, Verona, Mantua, Cremona, Brescia and Bergamo, underwent the same fate; the barbarians raging every where with such fury as can hardly be expressed or conceived, and putting all to the sword, without distinction of sex, age, or condition.”[39]
Every one must own that this was a very effectual method of preventing the plague in those cities. It did not, however, prevent that, or some other diseases, from destroying such numbers of the tyrant’s troops, that he was for that time prevented from taking Rome itself. From this time, to the total extinction of the western empire, we do not hear of any remarkable infection taking place. The barbarians still continued their wars with one another, while the emperors of Constantinople were likewise at continual variance with the Persians. At last, in the year 532, they concluded what they called a perpetual or eternal peace, which lasted eight years! Other treaties and truces were concluded; notwithstanding which, the war was almost continual in the east; while, by the second conquest of Italy, and the invasion of the Gothic territories, new desolations overspread the west. Thus, for a great number of ages, mankind had been preparing themselves for the dreadful pestilence which was about to ensue. Whatever infection could be communicated to the air by multitudes of carcases rotting above ground had been done in an ample manner. Whatever debility could be communicated to the human frame by famine, exposure to the inclemency of weather, by fatigue, terror, grief, and every thing that can render life miserable, had also been communicated by the most powerful means. There only wanted something to begin the calamity; and this, whatever it was, took place in the fifteenth year of Justinian. Mr. Gibbon ascribes the origin of it to locusts; and its universality, to the general mixture of all nations, and the unrestrained intercourse they had with one another. “No restraints (says he) were imposed on the frequent intercourse of the Roman provinces. From Persia to France the nations were mingled by wars and emigrations; and the pestilential odour, which lurks for years in a bale of cotton, was imported, by the abuse of trade, into the most distant regions. Procopius relates, that it spread always from the sea-coast to the inland countries: the most sequestered islands and mountains were successively visited; the places which had escaped the fury of its first passage, were alone exposed to the contagion of the ensuing year. In time, its malignity 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, or the air resumed its pure and salubrious qualities.”
Thus Mr. Gibbon endeavours to explain the causes of this plague from an alteration in the salubrity of the atmosphere, without taking into consideration the dreadful commotions among mankind, above related. But, now that we have noticed two very general infections, one in 767 B. C. the other 1300 years after, we find them both preceded and accompanied by wars uncommonly violent and destructive. The great plague in the time of Justinian is said by Mr. Gibbon to have continued only fifty-two years; but this we must understand of its first and most violent attack; for it appears, from the testimonies produced in the former section, that pestilential disorders, even very violent ones, continued at intervals for several centuries. Thus, from the year 541 to 593, the space of fifty-two years is included; nevertheless, in the time of Phocas, who began to reign ten years after, the same calamity continued; as did also violent wars with the Persians and other barbarians.
The year 622 is remarkable for the flight of Mahomet from Mecca to Medina, from which time we may date the rise of the empire of the Saracens; a people who, for desolation and destruction, were perhaps never equalled except by the Hunns and Moguls. In 630 the impostor himself died, after having just united the Arabs or Saracens, and fitted them for the work in which they were to be employed. Their first exploit was, to fall upon the empire of Persia, now weakened by its endless wars with the Romans. This was conquered in two years; after which they broke into Palestine, and conquered the provinces bordering upon Syria. In 634 they reduced Syria itself and Egypt. In 636 they took and plundered Jerusalem. In 642 they conquered the African provinces, and reduced some of the islands in the Levant. With unabated fury they proceeded to the east and west; laying siege, in 668, to Constantinople itself, where they received their first check by the shipwreck of their fleet, and the defeat of their army. Thus, in the space of 38 years, the immense tract of country from the eastern part of Persia to the confines of the Mediterranean Sea, with the northern coasts of Africa, the whole including a space scarce inferior to the empire of Alexander the Great, was reduced under subjection to a race of savage barbarians, who knew only how to plunder, destroy, and reduce other nations to slavery.