[14] _Purg. VI._-- "Athens and Lacedæmon, they who made The ancient laws, and were so civilised, Made towards living well a little sign Compared with thee, who makest such fine-spun Provisions, that to middle of November Reaches not what thou in October spinnest. How oft, within the time of thy remembrance, Laws, money, offices and usages Hast thou remodelled, and renewed thy members? And if thou mind thee well, and see the light, Thou shalt behold thyself like a sick woman, Who cannot find repose upon her down, But by her tossing wardeth off her pain." --_Longfellow._ The terrible pestilence, known as the Black Death, swept over Europe in 1348. During the five months in which it devastated Florence three-fifths of the population perished, all civic life was suspended, and the gayest and most beautiful of cities seemed for a while to be transformed into the dim valley of disease and sin that lies outstretched at the bottom of Dante's Malebolge. It has been described, in all its horrors, in one of the most famous passages of modern prose--that appalling introduction to Boccaccio's _Decameron_. From the city in her agony, Boccaccio's three noble youths and seven "honest ladies" fled to the villas of Settignano and Fiesole, where they strove to drown the horror of the time by their music and dancing, their feasting and too often sadly obscene stories. Giovanni Villani was among the victims in Florence, and Petrarch's Laura at Avignon. The first canto of Petrarch's _Triumph of Death_ appears to be, in part, an allegorical representation--written many years later--of this fearful year.