1When in this way he had completed seventy-seven years and right up to. 1extreme old age had grown no less in standing than in favour and fortune (for he gained many inheritances by nothing else than his goodness), and had enjoyed such good health that for thirty years he had needed no medicine, he contracted an illness which at first both he himself and his doctors made light of: for they thought it was tenesmus, for which quick and easy remedies were proposed. 3When he had spent three months in this without any pains, except those he suffered from the treatment, suddenly such a violent attack of the disease broke out in the lower intestine that at the last fistulas of pus burst out through his loins.
4And before this happened to him, when he felt that the pains were increasing day by day and that fevers had come on, he ordered his son-in-law Agrippa to be summoned to him, and with him Lucius Cornelius Balbus and Sextus Peducaeus. 5When he saw that they had come, leaning on his elbow, he said: 'How much care and attention I have given to looking after my health at this time, there is no need to recall in many words, since I have you as witnesses. 5And since, as I hope, I have satisfied you that I have left nothing undone that bore on curing me, it remains for me to look after myself.
5I did not want you to be unaware of this: for I am resolved to stop feeding the disease. 6For in these days, whatever food I have taken, I have so prolonged my life as to increase my pains without hope of recovery. 6Therefore I ask of you, first that you approve my decision, and then that you do not try to hinder me by dissuading me in vain.'