it often happens that a tendency to disease is handed down like other
qualities in a sort of succession. While he was in the prime of life he
overcame his malady and kept it well in check by abstemious and pure
living, and when it became sharper in its attacks as he grew old he bore
up against it with great fortitude of mind. Even when he suffered
incredible torture and the most horrible agony--for the pain was no
longer confined, as before, to the feet, but had begun to spread over
all his limbs--I went to see him in the time of Domitian when he was
staying at his country house. His attendants withdrew from his chamber,
as they always did whenever one of his more intimate friends entered the
room. Even his wife, a lady who might have been trusted to keep any
secret, also used to retire. Looking round the room, he said: "Why do
you think I endure pain like this so long? It is that I may outlive
that tyrant, even if only by a single day." Could you but have given
him a frame fit to support his resolution, he would have achieved the
object of his desire. However, some god heard his prayer and granted
it, and then feeling that he could die without anxiety and as a free man
ought, he snapped the bonds that bound him to life. Though they were
many, he preferred death.

His malady had become worse, though he tried to moderate it by his
careful diet, and then, as it still continued to grow, he escaped from
it by a fixed resolve. Two, three, four days passed and he refused all
food. Then his wife Hispulla sent our mutual friend Caius Geminius to
tell me the sad news that Corellius had determined to die, that he was
not moved by the entreaties of his wife and daughter, and that I was the
only one left who might possibly recall him to life. I flew to see him,
and had almost reached the house when Hispulla sent me another message
by Julius Atticus, saying that now even I could do nothing, for his
resolve had become more and more fixed. When the doctor offered him