Perpetua Vibia Perpetua
AD 203 · Roman Carthage · Her first day in prison, parted from her nursing baby
And I was terrified, for I had never known such darkness. O bitter day!
et expaui, quia numquam experta eram tales tenebras.. o diem asperumThe Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, chapter 3 (the part that is her own prison diary)
In the same thread
Ibn Khaldun ابن خلدون
1377 · Tunis · Cairo · Looking back on the Black Death of twenty-eight years before
In the middle of this eighth century (of the Hijra), civilization in East and West was struck by a sweeping plague that laid nations waste and carried off the people of a generation. It folded up and wiped out much of the good that civilization had made.
نزل بالعمران شرقا وغربا في منتصف هذه المائة الثامنة من الطاعون الجارف الذي تحيف الأمم وذهب بأهل الجيل وطوى كثيرا من محاسن العمران ومحاهاThe Muqaddimah, introduction
Ibn Khaldun ابن خلدون
1377 · Tunis · Cairo
It was as if the voice of existence had called on the world to sink into obscurity and shrink, and the world had hurried to answer.
وكأنما نادى لسان الكون في العالم بالخمول والانقباض فبادر بالإجابةThe Muqaddimah, introduction
Pliny the Younger Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus
events of AD 79 (letter of c. 107) · Roman Empire · A letter to the historian about the eruption of Vesuvius, which he lived through at seventeen
And night came, not like a moonless or cloudy night, but like the dark of a closed room when the lamp is put out. You could hear women wailing, infants crying, men shouting.
et nox — non qualis illunis aut nubila, sed qualis in locis clausis lumine exstincto. Audires ululatus feminarum, infantum quiritatus, clamores virorumLetters 6.20, to Tacitus
1 in 100 Billion · The social network of those who came before us