Sulla

He says also that his son, who had died a little while before Metella, appeared to him in his dreams, clad in mean attire, and besought his father to put an end to anxious thoughts, and come with him to his mother Metella, there to live in peace and quietness with her. However, he did not cease to transact the public business.

For instance, ten days before he died, he reconciled the opposing factions in Dicaearchia,[*](An earlier name for Puteoli.) and prescribed a code of laws for their conduct of the city’s government; and one day before he died, on learning that the magistrate there, Granius, refused to pay a debt he owed the public treasury, in expectation of his death, he summoned him to his room, stationed his servants about him, and ordered them to strangle him; but with the strain which he put upon his voice and body, he ruptured his abscess and lost a great quantity of blood.

In consequence of this his strength failed, and after a night of wretchedness, he died, leaving two young children by Metella.[*](Cf. chapter xxxiv. 3. ) For it was after his death that Valeria gave birth to a daughter, who was called Postuma, this being the name which the Romans give to children who are born after their father’s death.

Many now joined themselves eagerly to Lepidus, purposing to deprive Sulla’s body of the usual burial honours; but Pompey, although offended at Sulla (for he alone, of all his friends, was not mentioned in his will), diverted some from their purpose by his kindly influence and entreaties, and others by his threats, and then conveyed the body to Rome, and secured for it an honourable as well as a safe interment.

And it is said that the women contributed such a vast quantity of spices for it, that, apart from what was carried on two hundred and ten litters, a large image of Sulla himself, and another image of a victor, was moulded out of costly frankincense and cinnamon. The day was cloudy in the morning, and the expectation was that it would rain, but at last, at the ninth hour,[*](I.e. in the middle of the afternoon.) the corpse was placed upon the funeral pyre.