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much.
    ‘Callicrates,’ I said, ‘did you really have to go in there?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘like I told you.’
    ‘There won’t really be a lawsuit, will there?’ I said. ‘I thought that was only when people did something wrong, like stealing.’
    He grinned, and the cloak fell off his face. ‘Don’t you believe it,’ he said. And he was right, too, as it turned out. There was the most almighty lawsuit, and if he hadn’t gone into the house we would have lost, because of some legal presumption or other.
    Whatever else I may forget, such as my name and where I live, I shall always remember that walk through the City. Everywhere we went, the streets were either totally deserted or frantic with activity; and where there were people, they all seemed to have bodies with them. There were bodies in handcarts, or on the backs of mules, or slung over men’s shoulders like sacks, so that it looked for all the world like the grapes being brought down for the vintage. Some were taking them to be properly burnt (there was no space to bury anyone, not even the smallest child) but they had to hurry, because if anyone saw a pyre burning and no one watching he would pitch the body he was carrying on to it and go away as quickly as he could. Others were actually digging shallow trenches in the streets to bury their dead; in fact there was a lot of trouble about it later on, when people started scraping up these trenches to recover the coins that the relatives had left in the corpses’ mouths for the Ferryman, and the whole plague nearly started all over again. Then there were many people who dumped dead bodies in the water-tanks and cisterns, partly because they reckoned that water would wash away the infection but mostly because by that stage they couldn’t care less; and only a complete idiot left the door of his stable open, or even his house; because if he did he would be sure to find two or three corpses there when he came home, neatly stacked like faggots of wood. Really, it was like watching a gang of thieves desperately getting rid of stolen property when the Constables arrive.
    Naturally I wanted to stop and watch, since I felt that if ever I wanted to try my hand at a Tragedy or a Poem this would make the most wonderful set piece; the plague in the Greek camp at Troy, for instance, or the pestilence at Thebes at the start of an Oedipus. But Callicrates just wanted to get away as quickly as he possibly could, and he virtually pulled my arms out of their sockets in his haste to get home.
    ‘For God’s sake, stop dawdling, can’t you?’ he said several times. ‘You may be immune, but I’m not.’
    And so I had to let all those marvellous details go to waste and scamper along at his heels, like a dog who can smell hares in the corn but has to keep up with his master. Eventually we reached Philodemus’ house, which was mercifully clear of infection, and I was just able to eat a huge bowl of porridge with sausage sliced up in it and drink a cup of wine and honey before falling fast asleep.
    Apparently I slept for the best part of a day and a night, and while I was asleep Philodemus and Callicrates took out the cart, fetched the bodies out of my grandfather’s house, and cremated them honourably. Of course my grandfather himself was saturated with water from the trough and wouldn’t burn, so they had to dry him in the sun like goat’s meat for a journey; but they didn’t tell me that until several years later. They performed all the proper rites, however, mixing the ashes with honey and wine and milk and burying them in an urn with all the right invocations, and I’m very grateful for that, since properly speaking it was my job. When they got back, both Philodemus and Callicrates washed themselves very thoroughly and even burnt the clothes they had been wearing when they handled the bodies; Philodemus had got it into his head that the plague was somehow directly connected with all the dirt and squalor that