ned at a sudden touch of the unsuspected foe, as they watched in
dense crowds the pathetic or grotesque imagery of failure or success in
the triumphal procession. And, as usual, the plague brought with it a
power to develop all pre-existent germs of superstition. It was by
dishonour done to Apollo himself, said popular rumour--to Apollo, the
old titular divinity of pestilence, that the poisonous thing had come
abroad. Pent up in a golden coffer consecrated to the god, it had
escaped in the sacrilegious plundering of his temple at Seleucia by the
soldiers of Lucius Verus, after a traitorous surprise of that town and
a cruel massacre. Certainly there was something which baffled all
imaginable precautions and all medical science, in the suddenness [112]
with which the disease broke out simultaneously, here and there, among
both soldiers and citizens, even in places far remote from the main
line of its march in the rear of the victorious army. It seemed to
have invaded the whole empire, and some have even thought that, in a
mitigated form, it permanently remained there. In Rome itself many
thousands perished; and old authorities tell of farmsteads, whole
towns, and even entire neighbourhoods, which from that time continued
without inhabitants and lapsed into wildness or ruin.

Flavian lay at the open window of his lodging, with a fiery pang in the
brain, fancying no covering thin or light enough to be applied to his
body. His head being relieved after a while, there was distress at the
chest. It was but the fatal course of the strange new sickness, under
many disguises; travelling from the brain to the feet, like a material
resident, weakening one after another of the organic centres; often,
when it did not kill, depositing various degrees of lifelong infirmity
in this member or that; and after such descent, returning upwards
again, now as a mortal coldness, leaving the entrenchments of the
fortress of life overturned, one by one, behind it.

Flavian lay there, with the enemy at his breast now in a painful cough,
but relieved from that burning fever in the head, amid the rich-scented
flowers--rare Paestum roses, and the like [113] --procured by Marius
for his solace, in a fancied convalescence; and would, at intervals,
return to labour at his verses, with a great eagerness to complete and
transcribe the work, while Marius sat and wrote at his dictation, one
of the latest but not the poorest specimens of genuine Lati