Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/182

 160 HISTORY OF GREECE. aggravated by, these gloomy ideas, prophets -were consulted, and supplications with solemn processicr. were held at the temples, to appease the divine wrath. When it was found that neither the priest nor the physician could retard the spread, or mitigate the intensity, of the disorder, the Athenians abandoned themselves to utter despair, and the space within the walls became a scene of desolating misery Every man attacked with the malady at once lost his courage, a state of depression, itself among the worst features of the case, which made him lie down and die, without the least attempt to seek for any preservatives. And though, at first, friends and relatives lent their aid to tend the sick with the usual family sympathies, yet so terrible was the number of these attendants who perished, " like sheep," from such contact, that at length no man would thus expose himself; while the most generous spirits, who persisted longest in the discharge of their duty, were car- ried off in the greatest numbers. 1 The patient was thus left to die alone and unheeded : sometimes all the inmates of a house were swept away one after the other, no man being willing to go near it : desertion on one hand, attendance on the other, both tended to aggravate the calamity. There remained only those who, having had the disorder and recovered, were willing to tend the sufferers. These men formed the single exception to the all- pervading misery of the time, for the disorder seldom attacked any one twice, and when it did, the second attack was never fatal. Elate with their own escape, they deemed themselves out of the reach of all disease, and were full of compassionate kindness for others whose sufferings were just beginning. It was from them, too, that the principal attention to the bodies of deceased victims proceeded : for such was the state of dismay and sorrow, that even the nearest relatives neglected the sepulchral duties, sacred beyond all others in the eyes of a Greek. Nor is there any cir- cumstance which conveys to us so vivid an idea of the prevalent agony and despair, as when we read, in the words of an eye- witness, that the deaths took place among this close-packed crowd 1 Compare Diodor. xiv, 70, who mentions similar distresses in the Car- thaginian army besieging Syracuse, during the terrible epidemic with which it was attacked in 395 B.C. ; and Livy, xxv, 26, respecting the epidemic lu Syracuse when it was besieged by Marce!'w and the Romans.