History of the Peloponnesian War

for if through fear they were unwilling to visit each other, they perished from being deserted, and many houses were emptied for want of some one to attend to the sufferers; or if they did visit them, they met their death, and especially such as made any pretensions to goodness; for through a feeling of shame they were unsparing of themselves, in going into their friends' houses [when deserted by all others]; since even the members of the family were at length worn out by the very moanings of the dying, [*]( Or, by lamenting for the dying. See Arnold's note.) and were overcome by their excessive misery.

Still more, however, than even these, did such as had escaped the disorder show pity for the dying and the suffering, both from their previous knowledge of what it was, and from their being now in no fear of it themselves; for it never seized the same person twice, so as to prove actually fatal. And such persons were felicitated by others; and themselves, in the excess of their present joy, entertained for the future also, to a certain degree, a vain hope that they would never now be carried off even by any other disease.

In addition to the original calamity, what oppressed them still more was the crowding into the city from the country, especially the new comers.

For as they had no houses, but lived in stifling cabins at the hot season of the year, the mortality amongst them spread without restraint; bodies lying on one another in the death-agony, and half-dead creatures rolling about in the streets and round all the fountains, in their longing for water. The sacred places also in which they had quartered themselves, were full of the corpses of those that died there in them:

for in the surpassing violence of the calamity, men not knowing what was to become of them, came to disregard every thing, both sacred and profane, alike. And all the laws were violated which they before observed respecting burials;