Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/183

 SECOND AND THIRD YEARS OF THE WAR. 161 without the smallest decencies of attention, 1 that the dead and the dying lay piled one upon another, not merely in the public roads, but even in the temples, in spite of the understood defile- ment of the sacred building, that half-dead sufferers were seen lying round all the springs, from insupportable thirst, that the numerous corpses thus unburied and exposed, were in such a condition, that the dogs which meddled with them died in conse- quence, while no vultures or other birds of the like habits ever came near. Those bodies which escaped entire neglect, wero burnt or buried 2 without the customary mourning, and with un- seemly carelessness. In some cases, the bearers of a body, pass- ing by a funeral pile on which another body was burning, would put their own there to be burnt also ; 3 or perhaps, if the pile was prepared ready for a body not yet arrived, would deposit their own upon it, set fire to the pile, and then depart. Such indecent confusion would have been intolerable to the feelings of the Athenians, in any ordinary times. To all these scenes of physical suffering, death, and reckless despair, was superadded another evil, which affected those who were fortunate enough to escape the rest. The bonds both of law And morality became relaxed, amidst such total uncertainty of every man both for his own life, and that of others. Men cared not to abstain from wrong, under circumstances in which punishment was not likely to overtake them, nor to put a check upon their passions, and endure privations in obedience even to 1 Thucyd. ii, 52. O'IKIUV yap ov% virapxovaiJv, ii/i upq. erovf diairu/Lievuv, 6 0$6pof iyiyvero oiidevl Koafiu, a/l/lu KO.I veKpol kir uAA^Aoif inro&vrjaKOVTEf EKEIVTO, nal kv raff 66oi.f EKahivdovvro KOI Trept raj Kprjvag aTracraf Ti^iL&vrjTeg, rov vdaroc EKt&vftia. Ta re iepu ev oZf ianrjVTjvTo, VEKpuv 7r?.ea qv, avrov ivano&vijaKovruv ' virepfiia^o^ivov yap TOV KCLKOV ol uvdpuTroi OVK %OVTE o, Ti ytvuvTai, if ohiyupiav TI>UTTOVTO KOI lepuv Kat 6aluv dftoiuf. satisque constabat, nee illo, nee priore anno in tanta strage bourn homin umque vulturium usquam visum." a Thucyd. ii, 52. From the language of Thucydides, we see that this was regarded at Athens as highly unbecoming. Yet a passage of Plutarch seems to show that it was very common, in his tin-.e, to burn several bodies on the same funeral pile (Plutarch, Symposiac. iii 4, p. f 51 ). VOL. VI. HOC.
 * Thucyd. ii, 50: compare Livy, xli, 21, describing the epidemic at Romo
 * a 1 74 B.C. " Cadavera, intacta & canibus et vulturibus, tabes absumebat