especially among those who had come in from the country, and were
living in stifling huts through the intense heat of a southern summer.
Here the harvest of death fell thickest, and the corpses lay heaped
together, while dying wretches crawled about the public streets, and
encumbered the fountain-sides, to which they had dragged themselves in
their longing for drink. All sense of public decency, all regard for
laws, human or divine, was lost. The temples in which they had made
their dwellings were choked with dead, and the sacred duty of burial,
to which the conscience of antiquity attached so high an importance,
was performed in wild haste and disorder. Sometimes those who were
carrying out a corpse found a vacant pile prepared by the relatives of
another victim, flung their dead upon it, set fire to the pile, and
departed; and sometimes, when a body was already burning, others who
were seeking to dispose of a corpse forced their way to the fire, and
threw their burden upon it.

In the general relaxation of public morality all the dark passions of
human nature, which at ordinary times lurk in secret places, came
forth to the light of day, and raged without restraint. Some, who had
grown rich in a day by the death of wealthy relatives, resolved to
enjoy their possessions, and indulge every appetite, before they were
overtaken by the same fate. Others, who had hitherto led good lives,
seeing the base and the noble swept away indifferently by the same
ruthless power, began to doubt the justice of heaven itself, and
rushed into debauch, convinced that conscience and honour were but
empty names. For human laws they cared still less, for in the
universal panic there was none to enforce them, and before the voice
of public authority could be heard again, both judge and transgressor,
as they believed, would be involved in a common doom. All shame and
fear were accordingly thrown aside, and those whom the plague had not