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[429]
It was now a miserable case, and a sight that would justly bring
tears into our eyes, how men stood as to their food, while the more powerful
had more than enough, and the weaker were lamenting [for want of it.] But
the famine was too hard for all other passions, and it is destructive to
nothing so much as to modesty; for what was otherwise worthy of reverence
was in this case despised; insomuch that children pulled the very morsels
that their fathers were eating out of their very mouths, and what was still
more to be pitied, so did the mothers do as to their infants; and when
those that were most dear were perishing under their hands, they were not
ashamed to take from them the very last drops that might preserve their
lives: and while they ate after this manner, yet were they not concealed
in so doing; but the seditious every where came upon them immediately,
and snatched away from them what they had gotten from others; for when
they saw any house shut up, this was to them a signal that the people within
had gotten some food; whereupon they broke open the doors, and ran in,
and took pieces of what they were eating almost up out of their very throats,
and this by force: the old men, who held their food fast, were beaten;
and if the women hid what they had within their hands, their hair was torn
for so doing; nor was there any commiseration shown either to the aged
or to the infants, but they lifted up children from the ground as they
hung upon the morsels they had gotten, and shook them down upon the floor.
But still they were more barbarously cruel to those that had prevented
their coming in, and had actually swallowed down what they were going to
seize upon, as if they had been unjustly defrauded of their right. They
also invented terrible methods of torments to discover where any food was,
and they were these to stop up the passages of the privy parts of the miserable
wretches, and to drive sharp stakes up their fundaments; and a man was
forced to bear what it is terrible even to hear, in order to make him confess
that he had but one loaf of bread, or that he might discover a handful
of barley-meal that was concealed; and this was done when these tormentors
were not themselves hungry; for the thing had been less barbarous had necessity
forced them to it; but this was done to keep their madness in exercise,
and as making preparation of provisions for themselves for the following
days. These men went also to meet those that had crept out of the city
by night, as far as the Roman guards, to gather some plants and herbs that
grew wild; and when those people thought they had got clear of the enemy,
they snatched from them what they had brought with them, even while they
had frequently entreated them, and that by calling upon the tremendous
name of God, to give them back some part of what they had brought; though
these would not give them the least crumb, and they were to be well contented
that they were only spoiled, and not slain at the same time.
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