ut entering it,
having only taken a view of the walls at a distance. For what reason he
did not disembark in his first excursion, is uncertain; but in the last,
he was deterred from entering the city by a prodigy. He was in the habit
of diverting himself with a snake, and upon going to feed it with his own
hand, according to custom, he found it devoured by ants: from which he
was advised to beware of the fury of the mob. On this account, returning
in all haste to Campania, he fell ill at Astura [368]; but recovering a
little, went on to Circeii [369]. And to obviate any suspicion of his
being in a bad state of health, he was not only present at the sports in
the camp, but encountered, with javelins, a wild boar, which was let
loose in the arena. Being immediately seized with a pain in the side,
and catching cold upon his over-heating himself in the exercise, he
relapsed into a worse condition than he was before. He held out,
however, for some time; and sailing as far as Misenum [370], omitted
nothing (237) in his usual mode of life, not even in his entertainments,
and other gratifications, partly from an ungovernable appetite, and
partly to conceal his condition. For Charicles, a physician, having
obtained leave of absence, on his rising from table, took his hand to
kiss it; upon which Tiberius, supposing he did it to feel his pulse,
desired him to stay and resume his place, and continued the entertainment
longer than usual. Nor did he omit his 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 giv