When nothing availed to stay the pestilence, Athens fell into deep despondency and despair. The sick lost courage, and lay down inertly to await death. Those who waited on the sick were themselves stricken down, and so great grew the terror that the patients were deserted and left to die alone. Fortunately the disease rarely attacked any one twice, and those who had been sick and recovered became the only nurses of the new victims of the disease. So dread became the pestilence that the dead and the dying lay everywhere, in houses and streets, and even in the temples; half-dead sufferers gathered around the springs, tortured by violent thirst; the very dogs that meddled with the corpses died of the disease; vultures and other carrion birds avoided the city as if by instinct. Many bodies were burnt or buried with unseemly haste, many doubtless left to fester where they lay. Misery, terror, despair, overwhelmed all within the walls, while the foe without drew back in equal terror, lest the pestilence should leap the walls and assail them in their camps. Nor have we yet told all. Other evils followed that of the plague. Law was forgotten, morality ignored. Men hesitated not at crime or the indulgence of evil passions, having no fear of punishment. Many gave themselves up to riot and luxurious living, with the hope of snatching an interval of enjoyment before yielding to death. The story we here tell is no new one. It has been realized again and again in the flight of the centuries, when pestilence has made its home in some crowded city. Human nature is everywhere the same, and the bonds of law and morality are loosened when death stalks abroad. For two years this dread calamity continued to desolate Athens. Then, after a period of a year and a half, it came again, and raged for another year as furiously as before. The losses were frightful. Of the armed men of the state nearly five thousand were swept away. Of the poorer people the loss was beyond computation. Nothing the human enemy was capable of could have done so much to ruin Athens as this frightful visitation, and to the end of the war that city felt its weakening effects. But perhaps the greatest of the losses of Athens was the death of Pericles. In him Athens lost its wisest man and ablest statesman. The strong hand which had so long held the rudder of the state was gone, and the subsequent misfortunes of Athens were due more to the loss of this wise counsellor than to the efforts of her foes. _THE ENVOYS OF LIFE AND DEATH._