it.] But the famine was too hard for all other passions, and it is
destructive to nothing so much as to modesty; for what was otherwise
worthy of reverence was in this case despised; insomuch that children
pulled the very morsels that their fathers were eating out of their very
mouths, and what was still more to be pitied, so did the mothers do
as to their infants; and when those that were most dear were perishing
under their hands, they were not ashamed to take from them the very last
drops that might preserve their lives: and while they ate after this
manner, yet were they not concealed in so doing; but the seditious every
where came upon them immediately, and snatched away from them what they
had gotten from others; for when they saw any house shut up, this was
to them a signal that the people within had gotten some food; whereupon
they broke open the doors, and ran in, and took pieces of what they were
eating almost up out of their very throats, and this by force: the old
men, who held their food fast, were beaten; and if the women hid what
they had within their hands, their hair was torn for so doing; nor was
there any commiseration shown either to the aged or to the infants, but
they lifted up children from the ground as they hung upon the morsels
they had gotten, and shook them down upon the floor. But still they were
more barbarously cruel to those that had prevented their coming in, and
had actually swallowed down what they were going to seize upon, as if
they had been unjustly defrauded of their right. They also invented
terrible methods of torments to discover where any food was, and they
were these to stop up the passages of the privy parts of the miserable
wretches, and to drive sharp stakes up their fundaments; and a man was
forced to bear what it is terrible even to hear, in order to make him
confess that he had but one loaf of bread, or that he might discover a
handful of barley-meal that was concealed; and this was done when these
tormentors were not themselves hungry; for the thing had been less
barbarous had necessity forced them to it; but this was done to keep
their madness in exercise, and as making preparation of provisions for
themselves for the following days. These men went also to meet those
that had crept out of the city by night, as far as the Roman guards,
to gather some plants and herbs that grew wild; and when those people
thought they had got clear of the enemy, they snatched from them what