(This) disease was so powerful
that it spread from the ill to the healthy
like fire among dry
or oily materials.
It was so bad that it could be
communicated not only through speaking
or associating with the sick,
or anything else they had touched.
The pestilence spread so efficiently that,
not only did it pass from person to person,
but if an animal touched the belongings
of some sick or dead person
Such experiences or others like
them gave birth to a variety of fears
and misconceptions among the living,
and the cruel strategy (they pursued) was to avoid
even flee the sick and their belongings.
They thought that by doing so
they could stay healthy themselves.
"There were some who thought moderate living and the avoidance of excess had a great deal to do with
avoiding illness, so they lived apart from others in small groups. They congregated and shut themselves
up in houses where no one had been sick, partaking moderately of the best food and the finest wine,
avoiding excess in other ways as well, trying their best not speak of or hear any news about the death
and illness outside, occupying themselves with music and whatever other pleasures they had available."
This tribulation struck with fear
in the hearts of men and women
that one brother abandoned another,
uncles left nephews,
sisters left brothers,
often wives left their husbands,
and fathers and mothers left their children,
as if they were not even theirs.
Nor were these dead honored with tears,
lights or compassions.
Sunk to the level that people
were disposed of much
as we would now
now dispose of a dead goat.
Thus it became clear that what
the wise had never learned to suffer
with patience when, in the natural course of things,
it struck less dramatically and less often,
became a matter of indifference even
to the simple thanks to sheer scale of this misfortune.
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