ircumstances in which punishment was not likely to overtake them, nor
to put a check upon their passions, and endure privations, in obedience
even to their strongest conviction, when the chance was so small of
their living to reap reward or enjoy any future esteem. An interval,
short and sweet, before their doom was realized--before they became
plunged in the widespread misery which they witnessed around, and which
affected indiscriminately the virtuous and the profligate--was all that
they looked to enjoy; embracing with avidity the immediate pleasures of
sense, as well as such positive gains, however ill-gotten, as could be
made the means of procuring them, and throwing aside all thought both of
honor and of long-sighted advantage. Life and property being alike
ephemeral, there was no hope left but to snatch a moment of enjoyment,
before the outstretched hand of destiny should fall upon its victims.

The 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 Thucydides, who had no
predecessor, nor anything but the reality, to copy from. We may remark
that amid 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.

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 forty-four hundred _hoplites_ out of the
roll formally kept, and a number of the poorer population so great as to
defy computation. 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 P