emperor Titus.]

[Footnote 143: Now called Castellammare, in the Bay of Naples, about
fifteen miles southeast of the city of Naples.]

[Footnote 144: The paragraphs from this point to the end are from
Pliny's second letter to Tacitus.]

[Footnote 145: The island near Naples, now called Capri.]

SUETONIUS

Lived in the first half of the second century A.D.;
biographer and historian; private secretary of the emperor
Hadrian about 119-121; a friend of the younger Pliny, whom
he accompanied to Bithynia in 112; wrote several works, of
which only His "Lives of the Twelve Caesars" have survived.

I

THE LAST DAYS OF AUGUSTUS[146]

(14 A.D.)

His death, of which I shall now speak, and his subsequent deification,
were intimated by divers manifest prodigies. As he was finishing the
census amidst a great crowd of people in the Campus Martius, an eagle
hovered round him several times, and then directed its course to a
neighboring temple, where it settled upon the name of Agrippa, and at
the first letter. Upon observing this, he ordered his colleague
Tiberius to put up the vows, which it is usual to make on such
occasions, for the succeeding Lustrum. For he declared he would not
meddle with what it was probable he should never accomplish, tho the
tables were ready drawn for it. About the same time, the first letter
of his name, in an inscription upon one of his statues, was struck out
by lightning; which was interpreted as a presage that he would live
only a hundred days longer, the letter C denoting that number; and
that he would be placed among the gods as AEsar, which in the remaining
part of the word Caesar, signifies, in the Tuscan language, a god.
Being, therefore, about dispatching Tiberius to Illyricum, and
designing to go with him as far as Beneventum, but being detained by
several persons who applied to him respecting causes they had
depending, he cried out (and it was afterward regarded as an omen of
his death), "Not all the business in the world shall detain me at Rome
one moment longer"; and setting out upon his journey, he went as far
as Astura, whence, contrary to his custom, he put to sea in the
night-time, as there was a favorable wind.

His malady proceeded from diarrhea; notwithstanding which, he went
round the coast of Campania, and the adjacent islands, and spent four
days in that of Capri; where he gave himself up entirely to repose and
relaxation. Happening to