Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/254

 from an aqueduct, although every channel of water supply had apparently been cut off. In the only possible track a surface conduit had been divided, but for long afterwards no signs could be detected of a lack of water in the town. Evidently there must be a second supply; they dug down and came on an underground conduit beneath the first, and that also was severed. Only after the capture of the fortress was it discovered that at a still greater depth a third watercourse for the supply of the inhabitants had been constructed. Petra was now abolished by Bessas, who razed every building to the ground level, and departed with his prisoners to the capital.

Two years after the beginning of this war an outbreak of bubonic plague, the first circumstantially recorded in history, was manifested in the Eastern Hemisphere. The phenomena of the disease were first noted at Pelusium, whence it spread throughout Egypt on the one hand, and Asia Minor on the other. In the spring of the next year (543) it reached Constantinople, where it raged for four months. At first few persons were stricken, but the epidemic became intensified gradually, until at the height of its virulence as many as ten thousand victims died in one day. The cessation of all normal activities of social life, and the changed aspect of the Imperial capital have been described by Procopius, who was present there at the time. Deserted streets, except for those hurrying to bury the dead without religious rites; the oppletion of all ordinary sepul-*