usual custom of taking his station in the centre of the apartment, a lictor standing by him, while he took leave of each of the party by name.
LXXIII. Meanwhile, finding, upon looking over the acts of the senate, “that some person under prosecution had been discharged, without being brought to a hearing,” for he had only written cursorily that they had been denounced by an informer; he complained in a great rage that he was treated with contempt, and resolved at all hazards to return to Capri; not daring to attempt any thing until he found himself in a place of security. But being detained by storms, and the increasing violence of his disorder, he died shortly afterwards, at a villa formerly belonging to Lucullus, in the seventy-eighth year of his age 371, and the twenty-third of his reign, upon the seventeenth of the calends of April (16th March), in the consulship of Cneius Acerronius Proculus and Caius Pontius Niger. Some think that a slow-consuming poison was given him by Caius 372. Others say that during the interval of the intermittent fever with which he happened to be seized, upon asking for food, it was denied him. Others report, that he was stifled by a pillow thrown upon him 373,