Page:Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.djvu/577

 view of the case, when suddenly, as if he had been stricken from heaven, his breathing and his voice ceased, and his countenance appeared blood-shot, and in a moment the blood burst forth, and a deadly sweat broke forth over his whole body; and to save him from falling down in the sight of a number of low-born persons, he was led by his servants into one of the private chambers in the interior of the palace.

4. When he was placed on his bed, breathing with difficulty, though the vigour of his intellect was not as yet at all diminished, he recognized those who stood around, having been collected by the chamberlains with great promptitude, to prevent any of them being suspected of having murdered him. And as on account of the fever which was racking his bowels it was necessary to open a vein, yet no surgeon could be found, because he had dispersed them all over different districts to cure the soldiers among whom a dangerous pestilence was raging.

5. At last, however, one was procured; but though he punctured a vein over and over again, he could not produce a single drop of blood, while all the time his bowels were burning with the intensity of his fever; or (as some fancied) because his limbs were wholly dried up, in consequence of some of the passages, which we now call hemorrhoidal, wore closed up and crusted over through the severity of the cold.

6. The emperor, from the exceeding violence of his agony, felt that the moment of his death was at hand; and attempted to say something, and to give some orders, as was indicated by a sobbing, which shook his whole frame, a gnashing of the teeth, and a series of violent gestures with his arms, resembling those of boxers with the caestus: at last he became exhausted, and covered all over with livid spots, and after a severe struggle he expired, in the fifty-fifth year of his age, having reigned twelve years all but a hundred days.

1. This is a seasonable opportunity to do as we have often done before, namely, to retrace from the original