Chap. 45.] TEIT rOBTUNATE CIBCUMSTANCES. 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.^* 
And this, although he may have thought proper to gloss it 
over by that last dream of his,^^ 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.^ 
♦ 
CHAP. 45. TEN VERT EORTUI^^ATE CIKCUMSTANCES 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, 
dictator, master of the horse, one of the quindecemvirs for 
dividing the lands, ®^ and the first who had elephants in his tri- 
umphal procession, the same having been taken in the first 
8i 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. 
"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. 
^ This is referred to by Tacitus, Hist. B. iii. c. 73. — B. Plutarch tells 
us that Catulus performed this ceremony of dedication. 
s'' His consulships were a.u.c. 502 and 506 — B. 
^8 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. 
The commentators have endeavoured to prove, and not without some 
