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.^^ 
^6 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, fimbriasque 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 prsecoci sapientia." " I hate your bits of boys, 
with their precocious wisdom." We have a somewhat similar saying to 
the above passage from S'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. 
90 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. 
9^ This circumstance is mentioned by Seneca, De Provid. c. 3.— -B. 
32 We have the same account of Antipater in Valerius Maximus, B. i. 
c. 8. He was the preceptor of Cato of Utica ; Cieero makes honourable 
mention of him, De Oratore, B. iii. c. 50. — B. 
VOL. U. P 
