The Plague Athens
’Twas such a manner of disease, ’twas suchMortal miasma in Cecropian landsWhilom reduced the plains to dead men’s bones,Unpeopled the highways, drained of citizensThe Athenian town. For coming from afar,Rising in lands of Aegypt, traversingReaches of air and floating fields of foam,At last on all Pandion’s folk it swooped;Whereat by troops unto disease and deathWere they o’er-given. At first, they’d bear aboutA skull on fire with heat, and eyeballs twainRed with suffusion of blank glare. Their throats,Black on the inside, sweated oozy blood;And the walled pathway of the voice of manWas clogged with ulcers; and the very tongue,The mind’s interpreter, would trickle gore,Weakened by torments, tardy, rough to touch.Next when that Influence of bane had chocked,Down through the throat, the breast, and streamed hadE’en into sullen heart of those sick folk,Then, verily, all the fences of man’s lifeBegan to topple. From the mouth the breathWould roll a noisome stink, as stink to heavenRotting cadavers flung unburied out.And, lo, thereafter, all the body’s strengthAnd every power of mind would languish, nowIn very doorway of destruction.And anxious anguish and ululation (mixedWith many a groan) companioned alwayThe intolerable torments. Night and day,Recurrent spasms of vomiting would rackAlway their thews and members, breaking downWith sheer exhaustion men already spent.And yet on no one’s body couldst thou markThe skin with o’er-much heat to burn aglow,But rather the body unto touch of handsWould offer a warmish feeling, and therebyShow red all over, with ulcers, so to say,Inbranded, like the “sacred fires” o’erspreadAlong the members. The inward parts of men,In truth, would blaze unto the very bones;A flame, like flame in furnaces, would blazeWithin the stomach. Nor couldst aught applyUnto their members light enough and thinFor shift of aid—but coolness and a breezeEver and ever. Some would plunge those limbsOn fire with bane into the icy streams,Hurling the body naked into the waves;Many would headlong fling them deeply downThe water-pits, tumbling with eager mouthAlready agape. The insatiable thirstThat whelmed their parched bodies, lo, would makeA goodly shower seem like to scanty drops.Respite of torment was there none. Their framesForspent lay prone. With silent lips of fearWould Medicine mumble low, the while she sawSo many a time men roll their eyeballs round,Staring wide-open, unvisited of sleep,The heralds of old death. And in those monthsWas given many another sign of death:The intellect of mind by sorrow and dreadDeranged, the sad brow, the countenanceFierce and delirious, the tormented earsBeset with ringings, the breath quick and shortOr huge and intermittent, soaking sweatA-glisten on neck, the spittle in fine goutsTainted with colour of crocus and so salt,The cough scarce wheezing through the rattling throat.Aye, and the sinews in the fingered handsWere sure to contract, and sure the jointed frameTo shiver, and up from feet the cold to mountInch after inch: and toward the supreme hourAt last the pinched nostrils, nose’s tipA very point, eyes sunken, temples hollow,Skin cold and hard, the shuddering grimace,The pulled and puffy flesh above the brows!—O not long after would their frames lie proneIn rigid death. And by about the eighthResplendent light of sun, or at the mostOn the ninth flaming of his flambeau, theyWould render up the life. If any thenHad ‘scaped the doom of that destruction, yetHim there awaited in the after daysA wasting and a death from ulcers vileAnd black discharges of the belly, or elseThrough the clogged nostrils would there ooze alongMuch fouled blood, oft with an aching head:Hither would stream a man’s whole strength and flesh.And whoso had survived that virulent flowOf the vile blood, yet into thews of himAnd into his joints and very genitalsWould pass the old disease. And some there were,Dreading the doorways of destructionSo much, lived on, deprived by the knifeOf the male member; not a few, though loppedOf hands and feet, would yet persist in life,And some there were who lost their eyeballs: OSo fierce a fear of death had fallen on them!And some, besides, were by oblivionOf all things seized, that even themselves they knewNo longer. And though corpse on corpse lay piledUnburied on ground, the race of birds and beastsWould or spring back, scurrying to escapeThe virulent stench, or, if they’d tasted there,Would languish in approaching death. But yetHardly at all during those many sunsAppeared a fowl, nor from the woods went forthThe sullen generations of wild beasts—They languished with disease and died and died.In chief, the faithful dogs, in all the streetsOutstretched, would yield their breath distressfullyFor so that Influence of bane would twistLife from their members. Nor was found one sureAnd universal principle of cure:For what to one had given the power to takeThe vital winds of air into his mouth,And to gaze upward at the vaults of sky,The same to others was their death and doom.
In those affairs, O awfullest of all,O pitiable most was this, was this:Whoso once saw himself in that diseaseEntangled, ay, as damned unto death,Would lie in wanhope, with a sullen heart,Would, in fore-vision of his funeral,Give up the ghost, O then and there. For, lo,At no time did they cease one from anotherTo catch contagion of the greedy plague,—As though but woolly flocks and horned herds;And this in chief would heap the dead on dead:For who forbore to look to their own sick,O these (too eager of life, of death afeard)Would then, soon after, slaughtering NeglectVisit with vengeance of evil death and base—Themselves deserted and forlorn of help.But who had stayed at hand would perish thereBy that contagion and the toil which thenA sense of honour and the pleading voiceOf weary watchers, mixed with voice of wailOf dying folk, forced them to undergo.This kind of death each nobler soul would meet.The funerals, uncompanioned, forsaken,Like rivals contended to be hurried through.
And men contending to ensepulchrePile upon pile the throng of their own dead:And weary with woe and weeping wandered home;And then the most would take to bed from grief.Nor could be found not one, whom nor diseaseNor death, nor woe had not in those dread timesAttacked.
By now the shepherds and neatherds all,Yea, even the sturdy guiders of curved ploughs,Began to sicken, and their bodies would lieHuddled within back-corners of their huts,Delivered by squalor and disease to death.O often and often couldst thou then have seenOn lifeless children lifeless parents prone,Or offspring on their fathers’, mothers’ corpseYielding the life. And into the city pouredO not in least part from the countrysideThat tribulation, which the peasantrySick, sick, brought thither, thronging from every quarter,Plague-stricken mob. All places would they crowd,All buildings too; whereby the more would deathUp-pile a-heap the folk so crammed in town.Ah, many a body thirst had dragged and rolledAlong the highways there was lying strewnBesides Silenus-headed water-fountains,—The life-breath choked from that too dear desireOf pleasant waters. Ah, everywhere alongThe open places of the populace,And along the highways, O thou mightest seeOf many a half-dead body the sagged limbs,Rough with squalor, wrapped around with rags,Perish from very nastiness, with naughtBut skin upon the bones, well-nigh alreadyBuried—in ulcers vile and obscene filth.All holy temples, too, of deitiesHad Death becrammed with the carcasses;And stood each fane of the Celestial OnesLaden with stark cadavers everywhere—Places which warders of the shrines had crowdedWith many a guest. For now no longer menDid mightily esteem the old Divine,The worship of the gods: the woe at handDid over-master. Nor in the city thenRemained those rites of sepulture, with whichThat pious folk had evermore been wontTo buried be. For it was wildered allIn wild alarms, and each and every oneWith sullen sorrow would bury his own dead,As present shift allowed. And sudden stressAnd poverty to many an awful actImpelled; and with a monstrous screaming theyWould, on the frames of alien funeral pyres,Place their own kin, and thrust the torch beneathOft brawling with much bloodshed round aboutRather than quit dead bodies loved in life.