Famine, Plague and War

The rains and showers that come by custom in the winter season held back their usual downpour on the earth. An unexpected famine struck, and on top of it a plague, and an outbreak of another disease, an ulcer rightly called a carbuncle, a ‘burning coal’, because of its fiery look. Spreading over the whole body, it put those who suffered it in grave danger; but it fell most of all on the eyes, and so it blinded countless men together with women and children. [a] On top of this the war against the Armenians rose up against the tyrant. They had been friends and allies of the Romans from ancient times; but since they too were Christians and zealous in their reverence for the Divine, this enemy of God had tried to force them to sacrifice to idols and demons, and so made enemies of friends and foes of allies. [b] All these things, streaming together suddenly at one and the same time, refuted the tyrant’s presumption in boasting against the Divine. For he had boasted that because of his zeal for the idols and his siege against us, neither famine nor plague nor war had happened in his time. These things, then, coming upon him together and all at once, held within them the opening of his own overthrow as well. [c]

He himself, with his armies, was worn down in the war against the Armenians, while the rest of those living in the cities under him were terribly ground down by famine and plague together, so that a single measure of wheat sold for 2,500 Attic drachmas. [d] Countless people died in the cities, and still more in the countryside and the villages, so that the tax registers, which had once listed a great rural population, were very nearly wiped out altogether, almost everyone having perished at once from lack of food and from the plague. Some were willing to sell what was dearest to them to the better off for the smallest scrap of food; others sold their possessions bit by bit and were driven to the last extremity of want; and some, chewing little wisps of hay and recklessly eating harmful plants, ruined their bodies and died. [f] Some of the well-born women in the cities, driven by want to a shameless necessity, went out into the marketplaces to beg, showing a trace of their old free-born upbringing in the modesty of their faces and the decency of their dress. Some, withered away like the ghosts of the dead, gasping out their lives, staggered and slipped here and there, fell for want of strength to stand, and, stretched face down in the middle of the streets, begged that a little scrap of bread be held out to them; and with their life at its last breath they cried out that they were hungry, strong enough only for this most painful cry.

Others, those who seemed to be among the better off, were dismayed by the multitude of those begging, and after giving away a great deal they finally turned hard and unbending, expecting that they themselves would soon suffer the same as those who begged. So in the middle of the marketplaces and alleys dead and naked bodies lay scattered unburied for many days, a most pitiful sight for those who saw them. Some even became food for dogs, and this above all was why the living turned to killing the dogs, for fear they would go mad and begin eating people. No less did the plague devour every household, and above all those whom the famine could not wear out because they had plenty of food. Men of wealth, rulers and governors and countless officials, as though left behind by the famine on purpose for the plague, met a sharp and swift death. Every place was full of wailing; in every alley, marketplace and street there was nothing else to see but lamentations, with the pipes and the beating that were customary at them. [g] In this way death, campaigning with the two weapons we have described, plague and famine together, devoured whole families in a short time, so that one could see the bodies of two or three dead carried out in a single funeral procession.

Such were the wages of Maximin’s boasting and of the cities’ resolutions against us. At this time, too, the proofs of the Christians’ zeal and godliness in everything became plain to all the nations. For they alone, in the midst of such evils, showed their compassion and humanity in deeds. All day long some devoted themselves to the care and burial of those who were dying, for there were tens of thousands with no one to look after them; others gathered into one place the multitude of those worn down by famine throughout the whole city and handed out bread to them all. So the thing became talked about among everyone; people glorified the God of the Christians and, convinced by the facts themselves, confessed that these alone were truly devout and reverent toward God. After all this had happened in this way, God, the great and heavenly champion of the Christians, having shown by these events his threat and indignation against all people for what they had so excessively done to us, gave back to us again the kindly and bright radiance of his providence toward us. Most wonderfully, as in deep darkness, he made the light of peace shine on us from himself, and made it plain to all that God himself had been the overseer of our affairs all along: scourging his people and turning them back through troubles at the proper time, and again, after enough discipline, showing himself merciful and kind to those who put their hope in him. [h]