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span. No succour could crowds of slaves bring her in her distress, nor the physicians’ toilful art; yet while friends on every side feign looks of hopefulness, she marks her husband weeping. He now implores in vain Lethe’s inexorable stream, now sheds anxious tears at every shrine and leaves his imprint at the gates and flings himself down upon the threshold, now calls upon Caesar’s merciful deity. Alas! the cruel course of Fate! is there then aught that Caesar may not do? What tarrying could there have come to mortal lives, if thou, O Sire, hadst been all-powerful! far away would Death be groaning, imprisoned in the unseeing pit, and the idle Fates would have laid their spinning down.

And now her face falls, her eyes take their last wavering glances, and the hearing of the ears is dulled, save when only she recognizes her husband’s voice; him only does her mind returning from the midst of death perceive, him with faint arms does she bravely grasp, turning to him her stiffened cheeks, nor wishes to sate her eyes with the last glimpse of light, but only with her dear spouse. Then dying she thus consoles the loving heart that was one with hers: “O thou, my soul’s still-surviving half, to whom I would fain leave the years that cruel Atropos takes from me, spare thy tears, I pray, beat not thy breast with savage lament, nor vex thy consort’s fleeing spirit. I leave, ’tis true, a marriage-bower, yet in the due order of dying, because I die the first; better the life I have lived than a long old age; I have seen thee in the full splendour of thy fame, I have seen thee draw nearer and more near to the right hand on high.^[1] No fate, no god has power over thee now; I take with me