A year of shame and of so many evil deeds
heaven
POLLUTIA'S FORTITUDE; STORM AND PLAGUE |
also
marked by storms and pestilence.
Campania was
devastated by a hurricane, which destroyed everywhere country-houses,
plantations and crops, and carried its fury to the neighbourhood of
Rome, where a terrible plague was sweeping away all
classes of human beings without any such derangement of the atmosphere as to
be visibly apparent. Yet the houses were filled with lifeless forms and the
streets with funerals. Neither age nor sex was exempt from peril. Slaves and
the free-born populace alike were suddenly cut off, amid the wailings of
wives and children, who were often consumed on the very funeral pile of
their friends by whom they had been sitting and shedding tears. Knights and
senators perished indiscriminately, and yet their deaths were less deplored
because they seemed to forestal the emperor's cruelty by an ordinary death.
That same year levies of troops were held in
Narbon
Gaul,
Africa and
Asia,
to fill up the legions of
Illyricum, all soldiers in
which, worn out by age or ill-health, were receiving their discharge.
Lugdunum was consoled by the prince for a ruinous disaster by a gift of four
million sesterces, so that what was lost to the city might be replaced. Its
people had previously offered this same amount for the distresses of
Rome.