Around the public fountains, where the water
still bubbled up as freshly as in the summer-time of prosperity and
peace, the poorer population of beleaguered Rome had chiefly congregated
to expire. Some still retained strength enough to drink greedily at the
margin of the stone basins, across which others lay dead--their heads
and shoulders immersed in the water--drowned from lack of strength to
draw back after their first draught. Children mounted over the dead
bodies of their parents to raise themselves to the fountain's brim;
parents stared vacantly at the corpses of their children alternately
floating and sinking in the water, into which they had fallen
unsuccoured and unmourned.
In other parts of the place, at the open gates of the theatres and
hippodromes, in the unguarded porticoes of the palaces and the baths lay
the discoloured bodies of those who had died ere they could reach the
fountains--of women and children especially--surrounded in frightful
contrast by the abandoned furniture of luxury and the discarded
inventions of vice--by gilded couches--by inlaid tables--by jewelled
cornices--by obscene picture and statues--by brilliantly framed, gaudily
tinted manuscripts of licentious songs, still hanging at their
accustomed places on the lofty marble walls.
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