[Sidenote:—­17—­] It was after the episode just narrated that Vespasian fell sick, not, if the truth be known, of his ordinary gout but of fever and passed away at Aquae Cutiliae, [Footnote:  These are mineral springs, chiefly sulphurous in nature, both hot and cold, situated near the town of Cutiliae, famous for its pool with the “floating island.”  Celsus (On Medicine, Book Four, chapter 5 (=12)) recommends bathing and standing in such cold mineral springs as those at Cutiliae in cases where a patient suffers from inability of the stomach to assimilate food.—­The town itself is between Reate and Interocrea among the Sabines. (And compare Suetonius, Vespasian, chapter 24).] so-called, in Sabine territory.  Some, who endeavor falsely to incriminate Titus (among them the emperor Hadrian) have spread a report that he was poisoned at a banquet.  Portents had occurred in his career indicating his approaching end, such as the comet star which was seen for a considerable period and the opening of the monument of Augustus of its own accord.  When the sick man’s physician chided him for continuing his usual course of living and attending to all the duties that belonged to his office, he answered:  “The emperor ought to die on his feet.”  To those who said anything to him about the comet he responded:  “This is an omen not for me but for the Parthian king.  He has flowing hair like the comet, whereas I am baldheaded.”  When he at length came to the belief that he was to die, he said only:  “Now I shall become a god.”  He had lived to the age of sixty-nine years and eight months.  His reign lasted ten years lacking six days.  Accordingly, it results that from the death of Nero to Vespasian’s becoming emperor a year and twenty-two days elapsed.  I have recorded this fact to prevent a misapprehension on the part of any persons who might reckon the time with reference to the men who were in power.  They, however, did not legitimately succeed one another, but each of them while his rival was alive and still ruling believed himself to be emperor from the moment that the thought first entered his head.  One must not enumerate all the days of their reigns as if those days had followed one after another in orderly succession, but make a single sweeping calculation with the exact time, as I have stated it, in mind.

[Sidenote:—­18—­] At his death Titus succeeded to the imperial power.  Titus as a ruler committed no act of murder or passion, but showed himself upright, though the victim of plots, and self-controlled, though Berenice came to Rome again.  Perhaps this was because he had undergone a change.  (To share a reign with somebody else is a very different thing from being one’s self an independent ruler.  In the former case persons are heedless of the good name of the sovereignty and enjoy greedily the authority it gives them, thus doing many things that make their position the object of envy and slander.  Actual monarchs, on the other hand, knowing that everything depends on their decision,