The christians did not fail to ascribe this plague to the sins of Maximin; but it must be observed, that to his other sins he had added that of involving himself in a violent war, during which the pestilence broke out, and which probably was one of the causes of it. We may likewise observe, that if the sins of Maximin brought on the plague, the piety of Constantine could not keep it off; since we find that in the year 332, a considerable time after the death of Maximin, the territories of Constantine were ravaged by a dreadful plague, and the famine was so severe, that, at Antioch, wheat was sold at four hundred pieces of silver per bushel. The distemper which put an end to the life of Maximin himself was indeed so extraordinary, that we may reasonably excuse those who called it a judgment sent directly from heaven. His eyes and tongue are said to have putrefied; “an invisible fire was kindled in his bowels, which, being attended with unrelenting torments, reduced him in a few days to a perfect skeleton; his whole body was covered over with a kind of leprosy, and devoured by swarms of vermin; he could not be prevailed upon to take any nourishment, but greedily swallowed handfuls of earth, as if he had hoped by that means to assuage his pains, and allay the hunger with which he was tormented without intermission.”[37] All this, we are told, was the effect of poison, which he had swallowed in despair, after being defeated in battle; but the symptoms are unaccountable. [37] Univ. Hist. vol. xvi.