them of the
population whom they had from time to time sent out into the surrounding
territory, or from whom they had supplied their markets, they never
fancied that the real cause of the visitation which we have been
describing was their own iniquity in their Maker's sight, that His arm
inflicted it, and that its natural and direct interpretation was, "Do
penance, and be converted." On the contrary, they looked only at their own
vain idols, and at the vain rites which these idols demanded, and they
thought there was no surer escape from their misery than by upholding a
lie, and putting down all who revolted from it; and thus the visitation
which was sent to do them good turned through their wilful blindness to
their greater condemnation.

The Forum, which at all times was the resort of idleness and dissipation,
now became more and more the haunt of famine and sickness, of robust
frames without work, of slavish natures virtually and for the time
emancipated and uncontrolled, of youth and passion houseless and
shelterless. In groups and companies, in and out of the porticoes, on the
steps of the temples, and about the booths and stalls of the market, a
multitude grows day by day, from the town and from the country, and of all
the various races which town and country contain. The civil magistracy and
the civil force to which the peace of the city was committed, were not
equal to such an emergency as the present; and the _milites stationarii_,
a sort of garrison who represented the Roman power, though they were ready
to act against either magistrates or mob impartially, had no tenderness
for either, when in collision with each other. Indeed the bonds of society
were broken, and every political element was at war with every other, in a
case of such great common calamity, when every one was angry with every
one else, for want of some clearly defined object against which the common
anger might be discharged with unanimity.

They had almost given over sacrificing and consulting the flame or the
entrails; for no reversal or respite of their sufferings had followed
their most assiduous acts of deprecation. Moreover the omens were
generally considered by the priests to have been unpropitious or adverse.
A sheep had been discovered to have, instead of a liver, something very
like a gizzard; a sow had chewed and swallowed the flowers with which it
had been embellished for the sacrifice; and a calf, after receiving the
fatal blow,