roceed to tell where this disease
originated and the manner in which it destroyed men.

It started from the Aegyptians who dwell in Pelusium. Then it divided
and moved in one direction towards Alexandria and the rest of Aegypt,
and in the other direction it came to Palestine on the borders of
Aegypt; and from there it spread over the whole world, always moving
forward and travelling at times favourable to it. For it seemed to move
by fixed arrangement, and to tarry for a specified time in each country,
casting its blight slightingly upon none, but spreading in either
direction right out to the ends of the world, as if fearing lest some
corner of the earth might escape it. For it left neither island nor cave
nor mountain ridge which had human inhabitants; and if it had passed by
any land, either not affecting the men there or touching them in
indifferent fashion, still at a later time it came back; then those who
dwelt round about this land, whom formerly it had afflicted most sorely,
it did not touch at all, but it did not remove from the place in
question until it had given up its just and proper tale of dead, so as
to correspond exactly to the number destroyed at the earlier time among
those who dwelt round about. And this disease always took its start from
the coast, and from there went up to the interior. And in the second
year it reached Byzantium in the middle of spring, where it happened
that I was staying at that time. And it came as follows. Apparitions of
supernatural beings in human guise of every description were seen by
many persons, and those who encountered them thought that they were
struck by the man they had met in this or that part of the body, as it
happened, and immediately upon seeing this apparition they were seized
also by the disease. Now at first those who met these creatures tried to
turn them aside by uttering the holiest of names and exorcising them in
other ways as well as each one could, but they accomplished absolutely
nothing, for even in the sanctuaries where the most of them fled for
refuge they were dying constantly. But later on they were unwilling even
to give heed to their friends when they called to them, and they shut
themselves up in their rooms and pretended that they did not hear,
although their doors were being beaten down, fearing, obviously, that he
who was calling was one of those demons. But in the case of some the
pestilence did not come on in this way, but they saw a vis