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[12]
Therefore, his life really was such that nothing
could be added to it either by good fortune or by
fame; and, besides, the suddenness of his death
took away the consciousness of dying. It is hard
to speak of the nature of his death; you both know
what people suspect1 ; yet I may say with truth
that, of the many very joyous days which he saw
in the course of his life—days thronged to the
utmost with admiring crowds—the most brilliant
was the day before he departed this life, when, after
the adjournment of the Senate, he was escorted
home toward evening by the Conscript Fathers, the
Roman populace, and the Latin allies, so that from
so lofty a station of human grandeur he seems to
have passed to the gods on high rather than to the
shades below.
1 After a violent scene in the Senate, where he opposed Carbo in the execution of the agrarian law, Scipio was escorted home in the evening by admiring crowds. The next morning he was found dead in bed. Cf. Appian, Bell. Civ. i. 20; Vell. Pat. ii. 4. In other works (De or. ii. 170; Fam. ix. 21. 3; Qu. Fr. ii. 3. 3) Cicero takes the view that Carbo murdered him; cf. also Cic. De fat. 18; Livy, Epit. 59; Plut. C. Grac. 10.
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
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