BOOK VII. L. lyo-Lii. 173 



observed that plague aiways ti-avels from southern 

 quarters westAvard and almost never otlienvise, and 

 that it does not spread in winter, nor during a period 

 exceeding thrce months. 



LI. Again, signs of approaching death are : in a simsof 

 case of insanity laughter, but in delirium toying with deatZ"'^' 

 fringes and inaking folds in the bed-clothes, disregard 

 of persons trying to keep the patient awake, making 

 water, while the most unmistakable signs are in the 

 appearance of the eyes and nostrils, and also in lying 

 constantlv on the back, in an irregular and excessively 

 slow pulse, and the other symptoms noted by that 

 prince of medicine Hippocrates. And whereas the 

 signs of death are innumerable, there are no signs 

 of health being secure ; inasmuch as the ex-censor 

 Cato gave an as it were oracular utterance addressed 

 to his son about healthy persons also, to the effect 

 that senile characteristics in youth are a sign of 

 premature death. But so imhmited is the number of 

 diseases that the Syrian Pherecydes expired with a 

 swarm of maggots bursting out of his body. Some 

 people suifer from perpetual fever, for instance Gy.ius 

 Maecenas : the same had not an hour's sleep in the 

 last three years of his Ufe. The poet Antipater of 

 Sidon used to have a yearly attack of fever 011 one day 

 onlv, his birthday, and this at a fairly advanced age 

 carried him off. 



LI I . The ex-consul Aviola came to life again on the 

 funeral pyre, and as the flame was too powerful for 

 it to be possible to come to his assistance, was burnt 

 aUve. A similar cause of death is recorded in the 

 case of the ex-praetor Lucius Lamia, while Gaius 

 Aehus Tubero, a former praetor, is recorded by 

 Messala Rufus and most authoritles to have been 



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