Chap. 52.] DEATH. 209 



clothes;^® insensibility to the attempts of those who would rouse 

 them from sleep ; and involuntary discharges from the body, 

 which it is not necessary here to particularize ; but the most un- 

 equivocal signs of all, are certain appearances of the eyes and 

 the nose, a lying posture with the face continually upwards, an 

 irregular and feeble motion of the pulse, ^'' and the other symp- 

 toms, which have been observed by that prince of physicians, 

 Hippocrates. At the same time that there are innumerable 

 signs of death, there are none of health and safety ; so much 

 so, that Cato the Censor, when speaking to his son in relation 

 to those who appear to be in good health, declared, as though 

 it had been the enunciation of some oracle, ^^ that precocity in 

 youth is a sign of an early death. '^^ 



The number of diseases is infinite. Pherecydes of Scyros died 

 from vast numbers of worms issuing from his body.^^ Some 

 persons are distressed by a perpetual fever ; such was the case 

 with C. Maecenas ; during the last three years of his life, he 

 could never get a single moment's sleep. ^^ Antipater of Sidon, 

 the poet, was attacked with fever every year, and that only on 

 his birthday ; he died of it at an advanced age.^^ 



86 Pliny probably took this notion from Celsns, who speaks of this as 

 being a fatal symptom, B. ii. c. 6 ; " si manibus qui in febre, &c., in veste 

 floccos legit, limbriasque diducit. . . ." — B. 



^■^ "Yenarum percussa ;" the ancients were not acquainted with the 

 relation which exists between the arteries and the veins, or the appropriate 

 functions of these parts. — B. 



88 In Seneca, Contr. B. ii., we find the remark, " Such genius, at so 

 early an age, bodes no long life." Apuleius, quoting from some Greek 

 writer, says, " Odi puerulos praecoci sapientia." " I hate yoiu- bits of boys, 

 Avith their precocious wisdom." We have a somewhat similar saying to 

 the above passage from &eneca, "He is too wise," or " too clever to live 

 long," 



8^ This remark has been confirmed by various writers, ancient and modern ; 

 it appears to depend upon an unnatural development of the cerebral and 

 nervous system, which renders it more liable to disease, and less able to 

 bear the impressions to which it is ordinarily exposed. — B. 



9" This was probably Phthiriasis, or the " morbus pediculosus," which 

 has been previously mentioned in this book with reference to Sulla, and of 

 which, probably, Herod Agrippa died. Some authors state that Phere- 

 cydes put an end to his life by throwing himself from a rock at Delphi ; 

 others give other accounts of his death. 



3^ This circumstance is mentioned by Seneca, De Provid. c. 3. — B. 



52 "We have the same account of Antipater in Valerius Maximus, B. i. 

 c. 8. He was the preceptor of Cato of Utica ; Cicero makes honourable 

 mention of him, De Oratore, B. iii. c. 50. — B. 



YOL. II, P 



