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METAMORPHOSES BOOK VII our rivers with their poison. At first the swift power of the disease was confined to the destruction of dogs and birds, sheep and cattle, or among the wild beasts. The luckless plowman marvels to see his strong bulls fall in the midst of their task and sink down in the furrow. The woolly flocks bleat feebly while their wool falls off of itself and their bodies pine away. The horse, once of high courage and of great renown on the race-course, has now lost his victorious spirit and, forgetting his former glory, groans in his stall, doomed to an inglorious death. The boar forgets his rage, the hind to trust his fleetness, the bears to attack the stronger herds. Lethargy holds all. In woods and fields and roads foul carcasses lie; and the air is defiled by the stench. And strange to say, neither dogs nor ravenous birds nor grey wolves did touch them. The bodies lie rotting on the ground, blast with their stench, and spread the contagion far and near. " At last, now grown stronger, the pestilence attacks the wretched countrymen, and lords it within the great city's walls. As the first symptoms, the vitals are burnt up, and a sign of the lurking fire is a red flush and panting, feverish breath. The tongue is rough and swollen with fever; the lips stand apart, parched with hot respiration, and catch gasping at the heavy air. The stricken can endure no bed, no covering of any kind, but throw themselves face down on the hard ground; but their bodies gain no coolness from the ground; rather is the ground heated by their bodies. No one can control the pest, but it fiercely breaks out upon the very physicians, and their arts do but injure those who use them. The nearer one is to the sick and the more faithfully he serves them, the more quickly is he himself stricken unto death. And as the hope of life 381