Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/254

138 THE PLAGUE [ll be deemed a specific ; for that which did good to one did harm to another. No constitution was of itself strong enough to resist or weak enough to escape the attacks ; the disease carried off all alike and defied every mode of treatment. Most appalling was the despondency which seized upon any one who felt himself sickening ; for he instantly abandoned his mind to despair and, instead of holding out, absolutely threw away his chance of life. Rapidity with which Appalling too was the rapidity with the infection spread, which men caught the infection ; dying None could visit the sick ji,,^ ^-^ j^ ^j^ attended on one with impunity except •' those ivho had already another ; and this was the principal been attacked and had cause of mortality. When they were recovere . afraid to visit one another, the sufferers died in their solitude, so that many houses were empty because there had been no one left to take care of the sick ; or if they ventured they perished, especially those who aspired to heroism. For they went to see their friends without thought of themselves and were ashamed to leave them, at a time when the very relations of the dying were at last growing weary and ceased even to make lamentations, overwhelmed by the vastness of the calamity. But whatever instances there may have been of such devo- tion, more often the sick and the dying were tended by the pitying care of those who had recovered, because they knew the course of the disease and were themselves free from apprehension. For no one was ever attacked a second time, or not with a fatal result. All men congratulated them, and they themselves, in the excess of their joy at the moment, had an innocent fancy that they could not die of any other sickness. 52 The crowding of the people out of the country into the The misery aggra- city aggravated the misery; and the voted by the overcrowd- newly-arrivcd Suffered most. For, ing of the city. having no houses of their own, but inhabiting in the height of summer stifling huts, the mortality among them was dreadful, and they perished