followed a portentous madness which seized all the domestic
animals._
But let us now mention, as succinctly as possible, those disasters
which were still more vexing, because nearer home; I mean those
discords which are erroneously called civil, since they destroy civil
interests. The seditions had now become urban wars, in which blood
was freely shed, and in which parties raged against one another,
not with wrangling and verbal contention, but with physical force
and arms. What a sea of Roman blood was shed, what desolations and
devastations were occasioned in Italy by wars social, wars servile,
wars civil! Before the Latins began the social war against Rome, all
the animals used in the service of man--dogs, horses, asses, oxen,
and all the rest that are subject to man--suddenly grew wild, and
forgot their domesticated tameness, forsook their stalls and wandered
at large, and could not be closely approached either by strangers or
their own masters without danger. If this was a portent, how serious
a calamity must have been portended by a plague which, whether
portent or no, was in itself a serious calamity! Had it happened in
our day, the heathen would have been more rabid against us than their
animals were against them.