18 Many think that he was carried off by a violent fit of indigestion, for he had indulged in delicacies at supper; others suppose that he died of the odour of his chamber, which, from a recent plastering of lime, was dangerous to such as slept in it; others imagine that he fell a victim to the overpowering effects of charcoal, which he had ordered to be burnt in great abundance on account of the extreme cold. He died in the seventh month of his reign, on the 18th of April, in the thirty-third year of his age,12 and, by the kindness of the emperors that succeeded him, was enrolled among the gods; for he was inclined to equity, and liberal by nature.
Such was the state of the Roman empire in the consulship of the Emperor Jovian and Varronianus, in the year one thousand, one hundred and nineteen from the foundation of the city. But as we have now come to illustrious and venerable princes, we shall here fix a limit to the present part of our work; for the things that remain must be told in a more elevated style; and we do not, for the present, so much omit them, as reserve them for higher efforts in writing.
1 He had reserved Gaul for his own peculiar province.Tzschucke.
2 A building in the Campus Martius, intended chiefly as a lodging-house or hotel for ambassadors from foreign nations.
3 Who was married to Maximian's daughter Fausta.
4 Adversus nobiles omnibus exitiis saevientem.] "Raging against the nobles with every kind of destruction."
5 Necessitudo illi et affinitas cum eo esset.] He had a necessitudo or relationship with him, which relationship was an affinitas, or alliance by marriage. Affinitas is added, as Tzschucke observes, to explain necessitudo, which, consequently, might very well be omitted.
6 In nonnullus amicos dubius.] I have translated this phrase in conformity with the explanation of the old interpreter in Io. Antiochenus, cited by Tzschucke: PRO/S TINAS TW=N GNWRI/MWN U(POU/LWS TE KAI\ OU)K U(GI/WS E)/SXE.
7 Constantinople.
8 A building similar to the one at Rome mentioned in c. 2.
9 See ix. 8.
10 Senonis.] The ablative case of Senoni, -orum, previously called Agendicum, now Sens.
11 This Pontius is not generally called Telesinus; the other Pontius, who was distinguished as leader of the Samnites in the Social war, had that name. See Florus, iii. 18.
12 The words ut qui plurimum minimumque tradunt, which occur here, are not translated. See note on i. 1.