The melancholy picture of society under the pressure of a murderous epidemic, with its train of physical torments, wretchedness, and demoralization, has been drawn by more than one eminent author, but by none with more impressive fidelity and conciseness than by Thucydidês,[284] who had no predecessor, and nothing but the reality to copy from. We may remark that, amidst all the melancholy accompaniments of the time, there are no human sacrifices, such as those offered up at Carthage during pestilence to appease the anger of the gods,—there are no cruel persecutions against imaginary authors of the disease, such as those against the Untori (anointers of doors) in the plague of Milan in 1630.[285] Three years altogether did this calamity desolate Athens: continuously, during the entire second and third years of the war,—after which, followed a period of marked abatement for a year and a half: but it then revived again, and lasted for another year, with the same fury as at first. The public loss, over and above the private misery, which this unexpected enemy inflicted upon Athens, was incalculable. Out of twelve hundred horsemen, all among the rich men of the state, three hundred died of the epidemic; besides four thousand and four hundred hoplites out of the roll formerly kept, and a number of the poorer population so great as to defy computation.[286] No efforts of the Peloponnesians could have done so much to ruin Athens, or to bring the war to a termination such as they desired: and the distemper told the more in their favor, as it never spread at all into Peloponnesus, though it passed from Athens to some of the more populous islands.[287] The Lacedæmonian army was withdrawn from Attica somewhat earlier than it would otherwise have been, for fear of taking the contagion.[288] [284] The description in the sixth book of Lucretius, translated and expanded from Thucydidês,—that of the plague at Florence in 1348, with which the Decameron of Boccacio opens,—and that of Defoe, in his History of the Plague in London, are all well known. [285] “Carthaginienses, cum inter cetera mala etiam peste laborarent, cruentâ sacrorum religione, et scelere pro remedio, usi sunt: quippe homines ut victimas immolabant; pacem deorum sanguine eorum exposcentes, pro quorum vitâ Dii rogari maximè solent.” (Justin, xviii, 6.) For the facts respecting the plague of Milan and the Untori, see the interesting novel of Manzoni, Promessi Sposi, and the historical work of the same author, Storia della Colonna Infame. [286] Thucyd. iii, 87. τοῦ δὲ ἄλλου ὄχλου ἀνεξεύρετος ἀριθμός. Diodorus makes them above 10,000 (xii, 58) freemen and slaves together, which must be greatly beneath the reality. [287] Thucyd. ii, 54. τῶν ἄλλων χωρίων τὰ πολυανθρωπότατα. He does not specify what places these were: perhaps Chios, but hardly Lesbos, otherwise the fact would have been noticed when the revolt of that island occurs. [288] Thucyd. ii, 57.