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 466 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xliii age as the original source and seminary of the plague. 127 In a damp, hot, stagnating air, this African fever is generated from the putrefaction of animal substances, and especially from the swarms of locusts, not less destructive to mankind in their death than in their lives. The fatal disease which depopulated the earth in the time of Justinian and his successors 128 first appeared in the neighbourhood of Pelusium, between the Serbonian bog and the eastern channel of the Nile. From thence, tracing as it were a double path, it spread to the East, over Syria, Persia, and the Indies, and penetrated to the West, along the coast of Africa, and over the continent of Europe. In the spring of the second year, Constantinople, during three or four months, was visited by the pestilence ; and Procopius, who observed its progress and symptoms with the eyes of a physician, 129 has emulated the skill and diligence of Thucydides in the description of the plague of Athens. 130 The infection was sometimes announced by the 127 1 have read with pleasure Mead's short but elegant treatise, concerning Pestilential Disorders, the viiith edition, London, 1722. 128 The great plague which raged in 542 and the following years (Pagi, Critiea, torn. ii. p. 518), must be traced in Procopius (Persic. 1. ii. c. 22, 23), Agathias (1. v. p. 153, 154 [c. 10]), Evagrius (1. iv. c. 29), Paul Diaoonus (1. ii. c. 4, p. 776, 777), Gregory of Tours (torn. ii. 1. iv. c. 6, p. 205) who styles it Lues Inguinaria, and the Chronicles of Victor Tunnunensis (p. 9 in Thesaur. Temporum), of Marcellinus (p. 54), and of Theophanes (p. 153 [leg. 188 ; a.m. 6034]). [The plague seems to have appeared in Egypt in a.d. 541, for we must obviously read " the 15th year of Justinian " instead of " the 5th " (ie for e) in Agathias, v. 10. Before the end of the year, the infection was probably carried to Constantinople, for Theophanes says that it broke out in October, a.d. 541. But it did not begin to rage until the following year, a.d. 542 — the year of the 3rd invasion of Chosroes, Procop. B. P. 2, 20 ; Evagrius, 4, 29 ; Victor Tonn. ad ann. John Malalas (ed. Bonn, p. 482) seems to put it in the 5th Indict. = a.d. 541-2, his notice comes between a mention of the 5th Ind. and a mention of the 7th, he does not mention the 6th. See V. Seibel, Die grosse Pest zur Zeit Jus- tinians, 1857. The statement in the text that it penetrated into the west " along the coast of Africa " can hardly be correct. It must have reached Africa from Constantinople. The desert west of the Cyrenaica was an effectual barrier against the affection, and Corippus expressly states that the Moors escaped (Job.., 2, 388, gentes non laesit amaras Martis arnica lues). The malady spread in Africa in a.d. 543. See Partsoh, Prooem. ad Corippurn, p. xvi. xvii.] 129 Dr. Freind (Hist. Medicin. in Opp. p. 416-420, Lond. 1733) is satisfied that Procopius must have studied physic, from his knowledge and use of the technical words. Yet many words that are now scientific were common and popular in the Greek idiom. 130 See Thucydides, 1. ii. c. 47-54, p. 127-133, edit. Duker, and the poetical de- scription of the same plague by Lucretius (1. vi. 1136-1284). I was indebted to Dr. Huater for an elaborate commentary on this part of Thucydides, a quarto of 600 pages (Venet. 1603, apud Juntas), which was pronounced in St. Mark's library, by Fabius Paullinus Utinensis, a physician and philosopher. [Cp. the Appendix to Jowett's Notes on Thucydides, Bk. ii. (vol. ii. p. 141 sqq.), wbere this account of Gibbon and Boccaccio's narrative of the plague in 1348 are set beside the description of Thuoydides.]