1G2 HISTORY OF GREECE. their strongest conviction, when the chance was so small of theiz living to reap reward or enjoy any future esteem. An interval short and sweet, before their doom was realized before they became plunged in the wide-spread misery which they witnessed around, and which aflected indiscriminately the virtuous and the profligate was all they looked to enjoy ; embracing with avidity the immediate pleasures of sense, as well as such positive gains, however ill-gotten, as could be made the means of procuring them, and throwing aside all thought both of honor or of long-sighted advantage. Life and property were alike ephemeral, nor was there any hope left but to snatch a moment of enjoyment, before the outstretched hand of destiny should fall upon its victims. The melancholy picture of society under the. pressure of a murderous epidemic, with its train of physical torments, wretch- edness, and demoralization, has been drawn by more than one eminent author, but by none with more impressive fidelity and conciseness than by Thucydides, 1 who had no predecessor, and nothing but the reality to copy from. "We may remark that, amidst all the melancholy accompaniments of the time, there are no human sacrifices, such as those offered up at Carthage during pestilence to appease the anger of the gods, there are. no cruel persecutions against imaginary authors of the disease, such as those against the Untori (anointers of doors) f n the plague of Milan in 1G30. 2 Three years altogether did this calamity desolate Athens : continuously, during the entire second and third years of the war, after which, followed a period of marked abatement for a year and a half: but it then revived again, and lasted for another year, with the same fury as at first. The pub- 1 The description in the sixth book of Lucretius, translated and expanded from Thucydides, that of the plague at Florence in 13-48. with which the Decameron of Boccacio opens, and that of Defoe, in his History of the Plague in London, arc all well known.
- ' : Carthaginienses, cum inter cetera mala etiam pestc laborarcnt, cruenta.
sacrorum rcligione, et scelere pro remedio, usi sunt : quippe homines ut victimas immolabant ; pacem deorum sanguine eorum exposccntes, pro quorum vita Dii rogari maxime solcnt." (Justin, xviii ; 6.) For the facts respecting the plague of Milan and the Untori, see the inter- esting novel of Manzoni, Promessi Sposi, and the historical work of the
amc author. Storia della Colonna Infamc.
