BOOK XI. Lxx. 185-LXXI. 187 



Aristomenes who killed three hundred Spartans. 

 He himself when severely wounded and taken 

 prisoner for the first time escaped thx-ough a cave 

 from confinement in the quarries by following the 

 routes by which foxes got in. He was again taken 

 prisoner, but when his guards were fast asleep he 

 roUed to the fire and burnt ofF his thongs, burning 

 his body in the process. He was taken a third time, 

 and the Spartans cut him open ahve and his heart 

 was found to be shaggy. 



LXXI. In victims whose organs are propitious Theheartt, 

 there is a certain fatness on the top of the heart. »""°"<>"' 

 But the heart was not always considered as one of 

 the significant organs ; it was after the 126th 

 Olympiad, when Lucius Postumius Albinus, son of 

 Lucius, was King of Sacrifices, after King Pyrrhus 

 had evacuated Italy," that the augurs began to 

 inspect the heart among the organs. On the day 

 when Caesar as dictator first went in procession 

 dressed in pui-ple and took his seat on a golden 

 throne, when he performed a sacrifice the heart was 

 lacking among the organs ; and this gave rise to 

 much debate among the students of di\dnation, as 

 to whether the victim had been able to hve without 

 that organ or had lost it at the time. It is stated 

 that at the cremation of persons who have died of 

 heart disease the heart cannot be burnt, and the 

 same is said of persons that have been killed by 

 poison ; undoubtedly there is extant a speech of 

 Vitelhus that employs this argument to prove Gnaeus 

 Piso guilty of poisoning,* and expHcitly uses the evi- 

 dence that it had been impossible to cremate the heart 

 of Germanicus Caesar on account of poison. In reply 

 Piso's defence was based on the nature of the disease. 



549 



