Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the epidemic among the
Oxonians, how they had the epidemic, having begun to write as soon as it
broke out on No. 2 Staircase, and considering it to be the most
noticeable of all that had appeared previously. (For the place was not
liable to diseases at other times, but especially free from them, except
that which affected the teeth: on account of which they used to go up to
the metropolis, in word to consult the Delphic oracle but in deed to go
to Olympia, so that not a few were banished from the city both for other
reasons and not least this.) As to the causes of it, then, let any one
speak who is aware of them: but I will show what things happened on
account of it, having both myself put on an aeger and seen others
similarly afflicted, so that I can describe it with equal certainty more
than the narrative of another not having done so, but relying on the
incredibility of historians more than the sureness of experience.
For in the first beginning of the sickness men remembered what Homer says
about the lower and higher animals in the Trojan business--
First did he assail the mules and fleet dogs, but afterward, aiming
at the men his piercing dart, he smote,
seeing that now too not less but equally as much first, the College
Tutors were attacked, and next the scouts, and last of all the men
themselves. But most of all the scouts were affected, and this caused
the greatest calamity: so that a man must often wish that his scout might
recover, wishing indeed contrary to nature, but being persuaded by the
greatness of the surrounding misfortune, lest he should suffer even worse
things at the hands of a scout's boy, or considering it terrible if he
shall lose even the daily enjoyment of his breakfast not being brought to
him. And all laws concerning meals were brought into a state of
confusion, so that many anticipated taking the commons of another. And
they welcomed the hospitality of those outside the walls, regarding their
hunger in the present as much more important than another man's inability
to pay his debts in the future.
But when the men themselves began to suffer, then indeed the disease was
the commencement of lawlessness to a greater extent for the city. For
cuttings of chapels and avoidings of lectures, which are an agony for the
present more than a possession for ever, and in short all such things as
the indulgence of was formerly more disguised, these a man easily dared
to do, it being uncertain on the one hand whether his tutor has the
influenza, and on the other if he himself might not put on an aeger
before being hauled he should pay the penalty. And though some, indeed,
did things exactly contrary to this, and being before unaccustomed now
went in the morning with a run to chapel in order that fewer being
present the paradoxicalness of their appearance when compared with the
multitude of those who were absent might gain them a prestige of virtue
not real but simulated--yet with most there was now neither fear of the
Dean by land nor by sea of their coaches: disobeying whom they ate and
drank all kinds of things contrary to law, no one being willing to exert
himself for that which seemed to be honourable, and calculating that the
present abstention from pastry was not equivalent to the possibility of
being bumped in the future about as much and not less than if he had
smoked three pipes and a cheroot. And not only was injustice prevalent
among those who were as yet in good health, but many of those in the
ships, being or seeming to themselves to be sick, had their places taken
by others accustomed rather to fight upon the land, whose manly
inexperience, though in word more creditable than the cowardice combined
with experience of the others, was in reality less powerful than the
language which those on the bank thought worthy to use concerning them.
Nevertheless, about this time the Oxonians sent an expedition against
Cambridge, having manned a slow train to Bletchley, Nicolaidas being
commander second himself; and they advanced as far as Third Trinity, and
having ravaged part of the land and set up a trophy, they returned home.