"Amid this general lamentation and woe, the influence and
authority of every law, human and divine, vanished. Most of those
who were in office had been carried off by the plague, or lay
sick, or had lost so many members of their family, that they were
unable to attend to their duties; so that thenceforth every one
acted as he thought proper. Others in their mode of living chose
a middle course. They ate and drank what they pleased, and walked
abroad, carrying odoriferous flowers, herbs, or spices, which they
smelt to from time to time, in order to invigorate the brain, and
to avert the baneful influence of the air, infected by the sick
and by the innumerable corpses of those who had died of the
plague. Others carried their precaution still further, and
thought the surest way to escape death was by flight. They
therefore left the city; women as well as men abandoning their
dwellings and their relations, and retiring into the country. But
of these also many were carried off, most of them alone and
deserted by all the world, themselves having previously set the
example. Thus it was that one citizen fled from another--a
neighbour from his neighbours--a relation from his relations; and
in the end, so completely had terror extinguished every kindlier
feeling, that the brother forsook the brother--the sister the
sister--the wife her husband; and at last, even the parent his own
offspring, and abandoned them, unvisited and unsoothed, to their
fate. Those, therefore, that stood in need of assistance fell a
prey to greedy attendants, who, for an exorbitant recompense,
merely handed the sick their food and medicine, remained with them
in their last moments, and then not unfrequently became themselves
victims to their avarice and lived not to enjoy their extorted
gain. Propriety and decorum were extinguished among the helpless