Chapter XII (1)

Historians of the plague—Sketch of the four chief pestilences recorded—Origin of the disease—Plague of Athens—Of Constantinople—Of Florence—Of Milan—State of medical knowledge—Plague of London.

A history of the plague, in the hands of one qualified to do justice to the subject by medical knowledge joined to extensive research, might be rendered attractive in no common degree. It has chanced that the phenomena, moral and physical, of several remarkable pestilences have been described by writers of unusual power, whose eloquence has communicated to them a literary interest, independent of that which they must otherwise have possessed as striking passages in the history of man. Of these Thucydides is the earliest; and the plague which desolated Athens in the second year of the Peloponnesian war, though not the earliest mentioned in profane records, is the first of which any particular account has reached us. A sufferer as well as a spectator, he has related its symptoms, described the wretchedness which it inflicted on his country, and analyzed its moral effects with the accuracy and profoundness of reflection by which he is distinguished above all other historians; and no part of that work which he has delivered to us as an “everlasting possession”[91] has excited more admiration than this. Hippocrates, himself a contemporary, if not an eye–witness, has left a medical account of the same disease, and from these authorities Lucretius has composed one of the finest and most celebrated passages in his philosophical poem.[92] Procopius also has left a description of the plague[93] which during the reign of Justinian ravaged nearly all the known world, evidently modelled upon Thucydides, and not an unsuccessful imitation of him. In later times the great plagues of Florence and London have found worthy chroniclers in the two great novelists, Boccaccio, who was an eye–witness of that which he describes, and Defoe, the verisimilitude of whose narration is such, that it is difficult to believe it anything but what it proposes to be, the narrative of a person who had witnessed the eventful time of which he wrote. Defoe, however, was under three years old when the great plague of London broke out. Boccaccio appears, like Procopius, to have written in imitation, perhaps in emulation, of the Greek historian: Defoe has treated the subject in his peculiar style, and at much greater length than any of those whom we have named; and intermixing, as we must believe, a quantity of facts and observations, the result of minute inquiry, with a framework of fiction, has produced a narrative stamped, like all his works, with a singular appearance of reality, and remarkable for simple pathos and homely vigour of description.

We may divide pestilences into two classes: those which, as if dependent upon some noxious property of the air, have spread successively from country to country and devastated a large portion of the world, and those which have raged in a particular spot or within small limits, and which appear therefore to have been generated by some local accident, as is said to have occurred in Africa, B.C. 126 (A.U. 628), by the fetid exhalations from dead locusts,[94] or to have been introduced from other places, and to have been propagated rather by infection than the transmissive qualities of the air. To ascertain the specific difference between the two is probably beyond the reach of medical science; but the distinction is important, since the latter are susceptible of control by quarantine laws, which are powerless, perhaps worse than powerless, to arrest the former. Of these the most celebrated are quaintly described in a manuscript account of the great plague of London, preserved in the British Museum.[95]

“Of universall, or œcumenicall[96] plauges, the most spreading and destructive that I have met with in history are these four: ffirst that of Athens, which fell out in the Peloponnesian warr, before Christ 428, described most fully by that eminent historian, Thucydides, in his second booke, who had been sicke of it himselfe, but restored, and from him by that great promoter and enlightener of the Epicurean, or Corpuscular Philosophy, the poet Lucretius, in the last part of his last booke. This plauge, though it bee vulgarly called the Athenian plauge, because it did great execution there in that city, yet indeed not on Athens alone, but as Thucydides tells us, beginning at Æthiopia overran Afrika and transferred itself into Asia, and thence into Europe.

“The second famous, or œcumenicall plauge which hath occurred to my reading, was in the raigne of Vibius Gallus, and Volusianus his sonne, according to Calvisius, of Christ 253. This plauge is also related to have had its originall in Æthiopia, and from thense to have diffused itself into all the provinces of the Roman empire, and to have lasted fifteen yeares without intermission. How it raged in Alexandria and Ægypt wee understand from an epistle of Dionysius, the bishop of that city at that time, recorded by Eusebius in his viith book, cap. 22. Hee tells us it fell promiscuously on the heathens and the Christians, though most heavily upon the former, that noe house was free from the dire effects of its rage. From other parts of Affrique wee understand from St. Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, in his excellent sermon _de Mortalitate_, made on purpose to animate and strengthen the Christians, who were joynt and fellow sufferers with the heathens, _unde præsentis mortalitatis copia_, as he tearms it—‘the large measure of the present mortality:’ and of its rage at Rome wee find observed out of the Roman history by Calvisius that there dyed of it daily to the number of 5000, and therefore Brightman and Mead, both men sufficiently learned, in their comentaryes upon the Revelations, interpret this plauge to be one of the fearful judgments foretold to breake forth upon the opening of the fourth scale, chap. vi. 8. And Justus Lipsius, a critick of noe ordinary reading, saith of this pestilence in his book _de Constantia_, _lib._ 2, ‘_non alia unquam major lues, &c._’ that his reading did not afford him an example or president of a greater plauge, considering the many countreys it infected in the severall yeares that it lasted.

“The third universall plauge was that which happened in the raigne of Justinian, and took its beginning in the yeare of Christ 532, and this also, as the former, is sayd to have descended from Æthiopia. Wee have a copious description of it by Procopius in his _Persicorum_, lib. 2. And we are informed by him that it raged very much in Byzantium, or Constantinople, for four months space, and that when it was in its height, there dyed of it every day 10,000 and upwards; and this is the pestilence related by Evagrius the ecclesiasticall historian, which lasted, as he says, fifty–two yeares, not continuall, but by severall returns and revolutions, and of this pestilence he was sick himselfe. And Greece shared not only in the contagion of it, but also Italy, as wee read in Paulus Diaconus, and it swept away Pope Pelagius, the predecessor of Gregory the Great, about the year 580; ffor I conceive this plauge to be that in the raigne of Justinian, propagated into remoter countreys, and lengthened out to this tearme, much according to the forementioned computation of Evagrius. It also overran Fraunce in the year 583, and this I conceive to be that which plauged the Britons here in that vacation betwixt the Romans government and the Saxons, in Vortigern’s tyme, when the living could scarce bury the dead.

“The fourth œcumenicall plauge which I have taken notice of, was in the year 1347, ‘_quæ violentissima fuit, et totum mundum pervasit in annis sex et ita vastavit ut nec tertia pars hominum superesset_:’ they are the words of Calvisius, ‘it was most violent and ran over the world in six years, and soe wasted Europe that not the third part of men were left alive.’ To omit other parts, and see what it did at home in our owne countreye, Mr. Cambden reports in his Britannia, that in the yeare 1348 this plauge was soe hot that in Wallingford, in Barkshire, it dyspeopled the town, reducing their twelve churches to one or two, which they now retayne. In London it had soe quick an edge, that in the space of twelve months there was buried in one churchyard, commonly called the Cistercian, or Charter–house, above 50,000. They write further that through the kingdom it made such havock that it tooke away more than half the people; and it is noted there dyed in London alone, between the 1st of January and the 1st of July, 57,374. Soe Daniel, in 22, Edward III.”

It may be worthy of remark that of these plagues three are traced to Egypt or Ethiopia, while the fourth, as we shall presently see from Villani, is said to have originated in the north–east of Asia. Kircher, in his ‘Scrutinium de Peste,’ has given a catalogue of the most remarkable pestilences recorded, in which he mentions only one other universal plague, in the year 1400, but relates neither its origin nor its history. Another very destructive one broke out in the year 170 in Babylonia, which spread through the provinces, and carried off a vast number of persons at Rome. Galen was then living in the capital, and speaks of this disease as very similar to that described by Thucydides.

The present chapter will be employed in describing some of those pestilences which are most celebrated, either for the abilities exerted in describing them, or the ravages which they have committed; and will include the plagues of Athens, Constantinople, Florence, the plague of Milan in 1630, and of London in 1665. It is not our plan to give either a general history of the plague or a detailed account of the rise and fall, the symptoms and method of treatment of each particular scourge. The passages which we extract from Thucydides, Procopius, and Boccaccio, are complete in themselves; from those later pestilences, of which no master mind has given a comprehensive view, we have endeavoured to select such particulars and to quote such passages as show the moral consequences of the visitation, rather than to disgust by an often repeated story of suffering, or give a hospital chronicle of the varying intensity of the mischief from day to day.

We begin then with Thucydides’ account of the plague at Athens in the second year of the war.

“In the very beginning of summer, the Peloponnesians and their confederates, as before, two–thirds of the military power of each state, invaded Attica, under the command of Archidamus, son of Zeuxidamus, king of Lacedæmon, and after they had encamped themselves wasted the country about them. And before they had been many days in Attica the plague first began among the Athenians, said also to have seized formerly on divers other parts, as about Lemnos and elsewhere, but so great a plague and mortality of men was never remembered to have happened in any place before. For at first, neither were the physicians able to cure it through ignorance of what it was, but died fastest themselves, as being the men that most approached the sick, nor any other art of man availed whatsoever. All supplications of the gods, and inquiries of oracles, and whatsoever other means they used of that kind, proved all unprofitable, and at the last, subdued by the greatness of the evil, they gave them all over.”

“It began (by report) first, in that part of Æthiopia that lieth above Ægypt, and thence fell down into Ægypt, and Afric, and into the greatest part of the territories of the king.[97] It invaded Athens on a sudden, and touched first upon those that dwelt in Piræus; insomuch as they reported the Peloponnesians had cast poison into their tanks, for springs there were not any in that place. But afterwards it reached the upper city, and then they died a great deal faster. Now let every man, physician or other, concerning the ground of this sickness, whence it sprung, and what causes he thinks able to produce so great an alteration, speak according to his own knowledge; for my own part, I will deliver but the manner of it, and lay open only such things as one may take his mark by, to discover the same if it come again, having been both sick of it myself, and seen others sick of the same.

“This year, by confession of all men, was of all other for other diseases most free and healthful. But if any man were sick before, his disease turned to this; if not, yet suddenly, without any apparent cause preceding, and being in perfect health, they were taken first with an extreme ache in their heads, redness and inflammation of the eyes; and then inwardly their throats and tongues grew presently bloody, and sent out a preternatural and fetid breath. Upon this followed sneezing and hoarseness, and not long after the pain together with a mighty cough came down into the breast; and when once it was settled in the stomach it caused vomit, and with great torment came on all manner of evacuations of bile that physicians ever named. And most persons were taken with a hollow hiccough, bringing on violent convulsions, which in some ceased quickly, but in others were long before they gave over. Their bodies outwardly to the touch were neither very hot nor pale, but reddish, livid, and beflowered with little pimples and whelks; but so burned inwardly, as not to endure the lightest cloths or linen garment to be upon them, nor anything but mere nakedness; but rather most willingly to have cast themselves into cold water. And many of them that were not looked to, possessed with insatiate thirst, did this into the tanks. And whether they drank more or less, it was all one; and restlessness and wakefulness prevailed throughout. And while the disease was at the height, their bodies wasted not, but resisted the torment beyond all expectation, so that most of them died on the ninth or seventh day, of the inward fever, whilst they had yet strength, or if they had escaped that, then the disease falling down into their bellies, and causing there great exulcerations and immoderate looseness, they died many of them afterwards through weakness. For the disease (which took first the head) began above and came down, and passed through the whole body; and if a man survived through the worst part of it, still it caught hold of his extremities, and left its mark. For it fell upon the fingers and toes; and many survived with the loss of these members; some also with the loss of their eyes. And others presently upon their recovery were taken with such an oblivion of all things whatsoever, as they neither knew themselves nor their acquaintance.

“For this was a kind of sickness which far surmounted all expression of words, and both exceeded human nature in the cruelty wherewith it handled each one, and appeared also otherwise to be none of those diseases that are bred amongst us, and that especially by this. For all, both birds and beasts, that use to feed on human flesh, though many men lay abroad unburied, either came not at them, or tasting perished. And the proof is this: there ensued a total failure of all such fowl, which were not then seen, neither about the carcasses, or any where else: but by the dogs, because they are familiar with men, this effect was seen much clearer.

“So that this disease (to pass over many strange particulars of the accidents that some had differently from others) was in general such as I have shown; and for other usual sicknesses, at that time no man was troubled with any, or if there were any they turned to this. Now they died, some for want of attendance, and some again with all the care and physic that could be used. Nor was there any to say certain medicine, that applied must have helped them; for if it did good to one, it did harm to another; and as far as strength and weakness of constitution were concerned, it carried off all alike, even those that were most carefully nursed. But the greatest misery of all was, the dejection of mind, in such as found themselves beginning to be sick (for they grew presently desperate, and gave themselves over without making any resistance), as also their dying thus like sheep, infected by mutual visitation; for the greatest mortality proceeded that way. For if men forbore through fear to visit them, then they died forlorn; whereby many houses were emptied, for want of some one that would tend the inhabitants. If they forbore not, then they died themselves, and principally the honestest men. For out of shame they would not spare themselves, but went in unto their friends, especially after it was come to this pass, that even their domestics, wearied with the lamentations of them that died, and overcome with the greatness of the calamity, were no longer moved therewith. Still those who had recovered felt the most compassion both on them that died and on them that lay sick, as having both known the misery themselves, and now no more subject to the danger. For this disease never took any man the second time, so as to be mortal. And these men were both by others counted happy, and they also themselves, through excess of present joy, conceived a kind of light hope never to die of any other sickness hereafter.

“Besides the present affliction, the reception of the country people and of their substance into the city, oppressed both them and much more the people themselves that so came in. For having no houses, but dwelling at that time of the year in stifling booths, the mortality was now without all form; and dying men lay tumbling one upon another in the streets, and men half dead about every conduit through desire of water. The temples, also, where they took up their temporary abode, were all full of the dead that died within them; for, oppressed with violence of the calamity, and not knowing what to do, men grew careless both of holy and profane things alike. And the laws which they formerly used touching funerals were all now broken, every one burying where he could find room. And many for want of things necessary, after so many deaths before, had recourse to shameless burials of their dead. For when one had made a funeral pile,[98] another getting before him, would throw on his dead and set fire to it. And when one was burning, another would come, and, having cast thereon him whom he carried, go his way again.

“And the great licentiousness, which also in other kinds, was used in the city, began at first from this disease. For men more readily ventured on things which they formerly concealed, or durst not do freely and at their pleasure, seeing before their eyes such quick revolution of the rich dying, and men worth nothing inheriting their estates; insomuch as they judged it best to enjoy their fortunes briskly and merrily, considering them and their lives alike held but from day to day. As for pains, no man was forward in any action of honour to take any, because they thought it uncertain whether they should die or not before they achieved it. But that which produced present enjoyment, or which immediately led to it, was now received to be both honourable and advantageous. Neither the fear of the gods, nor laws of men, awed any man. Not the former, because they concluded it was alike to worship or not worship, from seeing that alike they all perished: nor the latter, because no man expected his life would last till he received punishment of his crimes by judgment. But they thought there was now over their heads some far greater judgment decreed against them; before which fell they thought to enjoy some little part of their lives.

“Such was the misery into which the Athenians being fallen, were much oppressed; having not only their men killed by the disease within, but the enemy also laying waste their fields and villages without. In this sickness also (as it was not unlikely they would) they called to mind this verse, said also of the elder sort to have been uttered of old:—

A Doric war shall fall,
And a great plague withal.

“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.

“All rites usual at burials were then neglected: there were no processions, no hymns, nor dirges; but it was sufficient if a man bore off a corpse upon his shoulders, and cast it down in the maritime quarter of the city. From thence the bodies, piled in heaps on barges, were carried oft wherever chance directed. At that time the factions[112] into which the people were before divided, relaxing from their mutual hate, applied themselves conjointly to pay due reverence to the dead, and buried all persons without distinction, whether they had any claim on them or not. And those whose delight had been in base and evil pursuits, shook off their lawless course of life, and accurately performed the duties of religion, not from having repented and learnt to govern their passions, nor from being suddenly turned into lovers of virtue; for it is impossible to change thus easily the natural temper, or the result of long continued habit, except by means of a divine interposition. But all were terror–struck at the scenes which surrounded them, and, in the expectation of immediate death, could scarce help assuming a temporary decency of conduct. But these same men, when they were quit of the plague, and supposed themselves in safety, through its departure to some other quarter, returned even to a worse frame of mind than before, and displayed still greater profligacy in their lives, surpassing their former selves in wickedness and lawlessness. So that one might truly affirm that this disease, either by chance or pre–appointment, accurately distinguished and passed by the worst men. But this was shown afterwards.

“At this time you could hardly see any one buying or selling in Constantinople; but those who kept in health sat at home, and took care of the sick, or bewailed the departed. Or if you did meet anyone abroad, he was carrying a corpse. All trade was idle; the craftsmen desisted from their crafts, and all persons abandoned whatsoever works they had in hand; so that a perfect famine revelled in a city abounding usually in all good things. To have enough of bread, or of any thing else, was difficult, and was considered a great privilege, so that it was thought that some sick persons met with an untimely end for want of necessaries. To sum up, no robes of state were to be seen in Constantinople, especially while the Emperor himself was ill; but in a city where the court of the whole Roman empire was held, all persons dressed like private men, and remained at home. Such was the course of the pestilence in Constantinople and throughout the empire: it also fell upon the Persians and all other barbarians.”[113]

On comparing this pestilence with that of Athens, we cannot fail to observe their different effects upon the conduct and tempers of those who were exposed to their influence. In the one, party spirit (and the factions of Constantinople were pursued with a violence as desperate as their origin was trivial) was hushed, and the most profligate were awed into temporary decency; in the other, every chain of society was loosed, every duty toward God and man forgotten in the intoxication of danger, and the craving to drown thought in sensual pleasure. “Let us eat and drink, for to–morrow we die,” was truly the maxim of the Athenians. Surely this difference can only be ascribed to the powerful effects produced by the received belief of a future existence upon the minds even of those who, under common circumstances, seemed regardless of such considerations. Among the Athenians practically no such belief existed; it was the creed of their poets, it was inculcated at their mysteries, but it was devoid of all authority to serve as a rule of conduct. In no age or place in which the Christian religion has been professed, however corrupted in principle or depraved in practice, has that general depravity, which is described by Thucydides, ensued in consequence of a similar calamity. The nearest approach to it is to be found in the great plague of Florence, as related by Boccacio. His account indeed, as being the introduction to a work of fiction, might be suspected of exaggeration for purposes of effect. It is, however, completely confirmed by Matteo Villani, in his continuation of the history of Giovanni Villani, his brother, who himself died in this plague. His narration gives some striking particulars of the duration and extent of the calamity, and of the evil consequences which it left behind it; which will serve well to introduce and corroborate the more picturesque and highly–coloured narrative of Boccacio.

The plague appears to have originated in 1346, in Upper India and China (Cathay), “and coming on day after day, and spreading from nation to nation, within the space of one year it comprehended the third part of the world, which is called Asia. And at the end of this time it fixed on the nations of the Mare Maggiore[114] and on the coasts of the Mare Tirreno, in Syria and Turkey towards Egypt, and the shores of the Red Sea, and northwards on Russia and Greece, and Armenia, and other adjoining provinces.” From the Mare Maggiore the plague was brought to Sicily, Pisa, and Genoa by some Genoese and Catalonian vessels, which fled thence to escape from it but too late. “Then in the process of the time appointed by God to the nations all Sicily was involved in this deadly pestilence, and Africa, in her coasts and in her provinces towards the east, and on the shores of our Mare Tirreno. And the plague coming gradually westward, comprehended Sardinia and Corsica, and all the islands of that sea; and in like manner on the continent of Europe, it seized on the neighbouring parts towards the west, and extended itself southwards, with more violence of assault than in the northern parts. In 1348 all Italy had the disorder, except the city of Milan, and some parts about the Alps, where it pressed little. And in this same year it began to pass the mountains, and to extend itself into Provence and Savoy and Dauphiné, and Burgundy, and along the seacoast of Marseilles, and of Aigue Morte,[115] and through Catalonia, so to the island of Majorca, and in Spain and Granada. And in 1349 it had taken in, on the extreme west, the coasts of the ocean in Europe and Africa, and Ireland, and the island of England and of Scotland, and other islands of the west, and all the land within, with nearly equal mortality, except in Brabant, where it did little mischief. And in 1350 it seized the Germans and Hungarians, Friesland, Denmark, the Goths and Vandals, and the other people and nations of the north.” The time during which the pestilence raged, in each country which it successively seized upon, is stated by Villani to have been about five lunar months,[116] lasting at Florence from the early part of April, 1348, to the beginning of September in the same year: and he estimates the mortality in that city and district, and in other regions, as far as report enabled him to form a judgment, at three out of five, of all sexes and ages, reckoning the poor with the rich; the poor, however, being somewhat the most diminished, because the pestilence began among them first, and they had less aid against it, and more discomforts and wants. The neglect, however, both of rich and poor, according to Villani, as well as Boccacio, appears to have been very general; but he adds a notice of the failure of the policy of those who withdrew themselves from the danger, and “shut themselves up in solitary places where the air was healthy, provided with every comfort for living, where there was no suspicion of infection, yet in different countries the judgment of God, against which there is no shutting of the door, struck them down, just as the others who had taken no care for themselves. And many others who had made themselves ready for death to save their relations and friends in their sickness escaped, although they had the disorder, and many had it not at all, though they continued this service.”[117]

This is an unintentional, and therefore an unsuspicious testimony to the absence of really contagious properties in this pestilence, as well as in the one described by Procopius. Boccacio, on the contrary, describes the virulence of the contagion in the strongest terms.

Upon this plague, and upon the practice alluded to by Villani, of withdrawing into sequestered retreats, Boccacio has formed the groundwork of his celebrated collection of tales. In an introduction he describes the phenomena of the disease, and the appearance of the city; and relates how a mixed party of both sexes, casually assembled, resolved to quit a scene of such danger and misery, and seek security in the loneliness of the country, and recreation in each other’s society. The tales are supposed to be related by each in turn for the amusement of the rest. Boccacio’s description of the plague runs as follows:—

“It was in the year 1348 that the deadly pestilence reached the noble city of Florence, the fairest of all in Italy; a plague which, whether proceeding from the influence of the heavenly bodies, or sent for our iniquities upon men by the just anger of God for our correction, began some years before in the eastern regions, deprived these of an innumerable quantity of living beings, and then communicating from one place to another, spread itself miserably, without stopping, towards the west. Prudence and human foresight availed nought against it, though the city was carefully cleansed from much filth by officers appointed for that purpose, and all the sick were forbidden to enter it, and much attention given to the preservation of health: nor was there more profit from the humble supplications made to God by devout persons, not once, but often, both in formal processions and in other manners: but the plague began to show forth its sad effects in horrible and wonderful fashion almost in the beginning of the above–named year. The symptoms were not such as they had been in the east, when bleeding at the nose was the sure sign of inevitable death; but at the beginning of the disease certain swellings appeared, alike in men and women, either in the groin or under the arm; some of which grew to the size of a common apple, some to that of an egg, and some more and some less, and the common people called them boils. And in a short time this deadly boil spread from the two parts of the body already mentioned, and began to rise indifferently in every part of the body, and soon after this the characteristic of the disease began to change into black or livid spots, which appeared on the arms and thighs, and every other part of the body of many patients, in some cases large and few, and in others small and thick. And as the boil had originally been, and still was, a most unfailing indication of approaching death, so were these spots whenever they appeared. Nor did it seem that the skill of any physician, or the power of any medicine, availed to cure these diseases, or was of any service; on the contrary, whether it were that the nature of the evil would not allow it, or that the medical attendants (the number of whom, besides the really skilful, had become exceedingly great, and comprised both men and women, who never had had any medical instruction), in their ignorance did not know whence it proceeded, and consequently could not take proper measures against it, the result was that not only few recovered, but almost all died within the third day from the appearance of the above–named symptoms, some a little sooner and some a little later, and most of them without any fever, or other incidental symptom. And the violence of the plague was the greater, because it spread from the sick to the sound by their mutual communication, just as fire catches dry or greasy substances when they are brought close to it. And the evil went yet farther; for not only by conversation and intercourse with the sick did the sound get the disease, and the occasion of the like death, but even the touch of clothes, or anything else which had been touched or used by the sick, seemed to carry with it the same disease, and communicated it to the toucher. It is a marvel to hear the tale which I have to tell; indeed had not many, and I myself with my own eyes, seen it, I should hardly have dared to believe, much less to write it, however trustworthy had been my informant. I say then that such was the virulence of the plague in spreading from one subject to another, that not only man gave it to man, but this much more remarkable circumstance often visibly occurred, namely, that something which had belonged to a man sick or dead of the disease, being touched by another animal not of the human race, not only infected it with the disease, but killed it in a very short time; of which my own eyes, as I just now mentioned, among other instances, received proof one day in the following manner:—The rags of a poor man who died of the plague were thrown into the public street, and a couple of pigs came up, and routed among them a great deal with their snouts, as their manner is, and took them in their teeth, and shook them against their faces; and both, in a very little while after, reeling about some time as if they had taken poison, fell dead to the ground upon the rags which they had so roughly handled. Hence, and from many other similar or more alarming circumstances, there arose various fears and fancies in those who still remained alive, and almost all of them tended towards one very cruel conclusion, to avoid and fly from the sick, and everything belonging to them, for every one believed that by so doing he would secure himself. Some were of opinion that moderate living, and avoiding all excess, had much effect towards resisting this calamity: and these made their parties, and lived away from all others, and collecting together and shutting themselves up in houses where there were no sick, and for their better living using the most delicate food and the best wines with the utmost temperance, and avoiding all luxury, there they tarried, without allowing themselves to speak to any one, or to hear any news from abroad of the dead or the ill, passing their time in music and such pleasures as they could obtain. Others held a contrary opinion, and asserted that the surest remedy for the disease was to drink freely, and to enjoy themselves, and to go about singing and amusing themselves, and to indulge their appetites in every way they could, and to laugh, and make sport of everything that occurred. And just as they said they acted, as far as they could; going night and day now to one tavern and now to another, drinking without stint or measure, and doing this for the most part in other men’s houses, provided only that they found anything there that was to their taste or fancy. And this they could easily do, because every one, as if he had no longer to live, had, as it were, abandoned his property, so that most houses had become common; and a stranger used them, if he happened to come to them, just as their own masters would have done. With all this brutal conduct, they always avoided the sick as much as they could. And in this affliction and wretchedness of the city, the respected authority of laws, both divine and human, was almost entirely fallen to decay and dissolved, from the condition of their ministers and officers; for these, like other men, were all dead or sick, or else left so destitute of assistants that they could perform no duty: so that every one might do whatever pleased him best.