468 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xliii pits beyond the precincts of the city. Their own danger and the prospect of public distress awakened some remorse in the minds of the most vicious of mankind ; the confidence of health again revived their passions and habits; but philosophy must disdain the observation of Procopius that the lives of such men were guarded by the peculiar favour of fortune or providence. He forgot, or perhaps he secretly recollected, that the plague had touched the person of Justinian himself ; but the abstemious diet of the emperor may suggest, as in the case of Socrates, a more rational and honourable cause for his recovery. 132 During his sickness, the public consternation was expressed in the habits of the citizens; and their idleness and despondence occasioned a general scarcity in the capital of the East. Extent and Contagion is the inseparable symptom of the plague ; which, a.d. 542-594 by mutual respiration, is transfused from the infected persons to the lungs and stomach of those who approach them. While philosophers believe and tremble, it is singular that the exist- ence of a real danger should have been denied by a people most prone to vain and imaginary terrors. 133 Yet the fellow-citizens of Procopius were satisfied, by some short and partial experi- ence, that the infection could not be gained by the closest con- versation ; 134 and this persuasion might support the assiduity of friends or physicians in the care of the sick, whom inhuman prudence would have condemned to solitude and despair. But the fatal security, like the predestination of the Turks, must have aided the progress of the contagion, and those salutary pre- cautions to which Europe is indebted for her safety were un- known to the government of Justinian. No restraints were imposed on the free and frequent intercourse of the Koman provinces; from Persia to France, the nations were mingled 132 It was thus that Socrates had been saved by his temperance, in the plague of Athens (Aul. Gellius, Noct. Attic, ii. 1). Dr. Mead accounts for the peculiar salubrity of religious houses, by the two advantages of seclusion and abstinence (p. 18, 19). 133 Mead proves that the plague is contagious, from Thucydides, Lucretius, Aris- totle, Galen, and common experience (p. 10-20) ; and he refutes (Preface, p. ii.-xiii.) the contrary opinion of the French physicians who visited Marseilles in the year 1720. Yet these were the recent and enlightened spectators of a plague which, in a few months, swept away 50,000 inhabitants (sur la Peste de Marseille, PariB, 1786) of a city that, in the present hour of prosperity and trade, contains no more than 90,000 souls (Necker, sur les Finances, torn. i. p. 231). 134 The strong assertions of Procopius — of/re yap larpf otire ISiuitt) — are over- thrown by the subsequent experience of Evagrius.
