Section 421
The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.64% accurate
390 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. most valuable effects to those better supplied, for the smallest quantity of food. Others gradually spending all their posses sions were reduced to the last extreme of want. And now some even chewing remnants of hay, and others eating without distinc tion certain noxious herbs, miserably destroyed the constitution of the body. Also, some of the more honourable females through out the cities, constrained by want to throw aside all sliame, went into the public markets to beg, indicating the evidences of their former liberal education, by the modesty of their counte nances and the decency of their apparel. Some, indeed, wasted away to mere skeletons, stumbled hither and thither like dead shadows, trembling and tottering, from excessive weakness and inability to stand ; they fell down in the midst of the streets, where they lay stretched out, and only earnestly begged some one to hand them a little morsel of bread, then drawing in their breath, with the last gasp they cried out hunger ! having only strength sufficient for this most painful cry. Some, however, of those that appeared better supplied, astonished at the great mul titude of those begging, after giving vast quantities away, after wards yielded to a harsh and inflexible disposition, expecting that they would soon suffer the same things with those begging of them. So that now in the midst of the streets and lanes, the dead and naked bodies, cast out and lying for many days, pre sented a most painful spectacle to the beholders. Some, indeed, were already the food of dogs, on which account, especially, the survivors began to slay the dogs, lest growing mad they should devour men. The pestilence, however, in the mean time, did not the less prey upon every house and family, particularly those however, whom the famine from their abundance of food could not destroy ; the wealthy, the rulers, generals, and vast numbers in office, who, as if they had been designedly left by the famine to the pestilence, were overtaken by a sudden, violent, and rapid death. All places, therefore, were filled with lamentation, in all streets, lanes, market places, and highways. Nothing was to be seen but tears, with the accustomed flutes, and funeral dirge. In this manner death waged a desolating war with these two wea pons, famine and pestilence, destroying whole families in a short