Chap. 45.] TEN FORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES. 191 



detest Sylla ? And then, besides, was not the close of his life 

 more horrible than the sufferings which had been experienced 

 by any of those who had been proscribed by him ? his very flesh 

 eating into itself, and so engendering his own punishment. 84 

 And this, although he may have thought proper to gloss it 

 over by that last dream of his, 85 in the very midst of which 

 he may be said, in some measure, to have died ; and in which, 

 as he pretended, he was told that his glory alone had risen 

 superior to all envy ; though at the same time, he confessed that 

 it was still wanting to his supreme happiness, that he had not 

 dedicated the Capitol. 86 



CHAP. 45. TEN VERT FORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH HAVE 



HAPPENED TO THE SAME PERSON. 



Q. Metellus, in the funeral oration which he made in praise 

 of his father, L. Metellus, who had been pontiff, twice consul, 87 

 dictator, master of the horse, one of the quindecemvirs for 

 dividing the lands, 88 and the first who had elephants in his tri- 

 umphal procession, 89 the same having been taken in the first 



84 According to Pliny, B. xi. c. 39, and Plutarch, Sylla was affected by 

 what has been termed the " Morbus pediculosus" or " Lousy disease." Plu- 

 tarch, however, ascribes his death to the bursting of an internal abscess ; 

 and the same cause is assigned by Val. Maximus, B. ix. c. 3. B. It was 

 probably of a similar disease that Herod Agrippa died, whom we find 

 mentioned in Acts xii. 23, as being eaten of worms. 



85 Plutarch refers to a dream which Sylla had a short time before his 

 death, but it does not seem to correspond to the one here alluded to. B. 

 u Plutarch relates that shortly before his death, Sylla dreamed that his 

 son Cornelius, who died before his wife, Cecilia Metella, appeared to him, 

 and summoned him away to join his mother. Appian also states that just 

 before his death, Sylla beheld a spirit in a dream, which summoned him by 

 name; upon which he called together his friends, made his will, and died 

 soon after of a fever. Only two days before his death he finished the 

 twenty-second book of his Memoirs, in which, foreseeing his end, he 

 boasted of the prediction of the Chaldseans, that it was his fate to die after 

 a happy life, and in the height of his prosperity. 



86 This is referred to by Tacitus, Hist. B. iii. c. 73. B. Plutarch tells 

 us that Catulus performed this ceremony of dedication. 



87 His consulships were A.TJ.C. 502 and 506 B. 



88 Hardouin informs us, that a certain number of public officers, which 

 varied from three to twenty, were appointed to divide the lands of the 

 conquered people among the Roman colonists. Lemaire, vol. iii. 

 p. 159. B. 



89 The commentators have endeavoured to prove, and not without some 



