the cold waters, he nevertheless attended to the dispatch of business,
and even gave audience to ambassadors in bed. At last, being taken ill
of a diarrhoea, to such a degree that he was ready to faint, he cried
out, "An emperor ought to die standing upright." In endeavouring to
rise, he died in the hands of those who were helping him up, upon the
eighth of the calends of July [24th June] [774], being sixty-nine years,
one month, and seven days old.

XXV. All are agreed that he had such confidence in the calculations on
his own nativity and that of his sons, that, after several conspiracies
against him, he told the senate, that either his sons would succeed him,
or nobody. It is said likewise, that he once saw in a dream a balance in
the middle of the porch of the Palatine house exactly poised; in one
(462) scale of which stood Claudius and Nero, in the other, himself and
his sons. The event corresponded to the symbol; for the reigns of the
two parties were precisely of the same duration. [775]

* * * * * *

Neither consanguinity nor adoption, as formerly, but great influence in
the army having now become the road to the imperial throne, no person
could claim a better title to that elevation than Titus Flavius
Vespasian. He had not only served with great reputation in the wars both
in Britain and Judaea, but seemed as yet untainted with any vice which
could pervert his conduct in the civil administration of the empire. It
appears, however, that he was prompted more by the persuasion of friends,
than by his own ambition, to prosecute the attainment of the imperial
dignity. To render this enterprise more successful, recourse was had to
a new and peculiar artifice, which, while well accommodated to the
superstitious credulity of the Romans, impressed them with an idea, that