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1. An idea of Lucretius, already exploited in II, 12, ‘An apology for Raymond Sebond’.

2. Virgil, Aeneid, III, 72.

3. Lucretius, De nat. rerum, II, 1165–8.

4. Marcus Annaeus Seneca, Suasoriae, I, iv.

5. Lucan, Pharsalia, V, 579–82; cf. Erasmus, Apophthegmata, IV, Julius Caesar, IX.

6. Lucan, ibid., V, 653–6.

7. Virgil, Georgics, I, 466–7.

8. Pliny, Hist. nat., II, viii.

9. Caligula’s cruelty was legendary, but the saying is that of Tiberius: Erasmus, Apophthegmata, VI, Tiberius Caesar, X: ‘Carvillius has got away.’

10. Lucan, Pharsalia, II, 178–80.

11. Ever since Lampridius’ Life of him, the Emperor Heliogabalus, the son of Antonius Caracalla, was infamous for his effeminacy and luxurious ways.

12. Lucan, Pharsalia, IV, 798.

13. Plutarch, Life of Caesar.

14. Tacitus, Annals, IV, xxii.

15. Tacitus, ibid., VI, xlviii.

16. Ravisius Textor, Officina; chapter headed ‘Mortem qui sibi consciverunt’.

17. Cf. Ravisius Textor, ibid.

18. Tacitus, Annals, XVI, xv.

19. Anecdote from Xiphilinus’ Life of Hadrian.

20. Plutarch (tr. Amyot), Dicts des anciens Roys, 209 F.

21. Pliny, Hist. nat., VII, liii.

22. Cited by Cicero, Tusc. disput., I, viii, 15.

23. His Epistulae ad Atticum.

24. Cornelius Nepos, Life of Atticus.

25. Diogenes Laertius, Life of Cleanthes.

26. Horace, Ars poetica, 467.

27. Seneca’s Epist. moral., XXIX, is devoted to the illness of Marcus Tullius Marcellinus, a friend of his, whose suicide is related in LXXVII, 5 ff.

28. That is, Cato of Utica (the defender of the Republic against Julius Caesar) ‘murdered himself’ in a manner more exalted than that of Marcellinus and it strikes us with more ecstatic amazement (Plutarch, Life of Cato of Utica).