1Agricola had been born on the Ides of June in the third consulship of Gaius Caesar: he died in his fifty-fourth year, on the tenth day before the Kalends of September, in the consulship of Collega and Priscus. 2If posterity should wish to know his appearance too, he was well-proportioned rather than tall; 2there was nothing fierce in his expression: graciousness of countenance prevailed. 2You would readily believe him a good man, and gladly a great one. 3And he himself, although snatched away in the midst of his vigorous years, as far as glory is concerned completed the longest of lives. 3For he had fully attained the true blessings, which lie in virtues, and what else could fortune add to a man endowed with the consulship and triumphal insignia?
4He took no delight in excessive wealth, and showy riches had not come his way. 4With his daughter and wife surviving him, he may even be thought fortunate in having escaped what was to come, with his dignity unimpaired, his fame flourishing, his kinships and friendships safe. 5For just as it was denied him to live on into the light of this most blessed age and to see Trajan as emperor, which he used to foretell in our hearing with prophecy and prayer, so he had a great consolation for his hastened death in having escaped that final period in which Domitian drained the state no longer at intervals and with breathing-spaces, but continuously and as if with a single blow.