marks of his favour.[683] Virgil, Horace, Propertius, and Varius, were amongst his friends and constant associates. Mæcenas was a low-spirited invalid;[684] latterly he could not sleep, and endeavoured in vain to procure repose by listening to soft music.[685] In his last distressing illness he generally resided at his Tiburtine villa, where the murmuring falls of the Anio invited that sleep which was denied him elsewhere. He died B. C. 8, and was buried on the Esquiline. Though married, he left no children, and bequeathed his property to the Emperor, whom he besought in his will not to forget his beloved Horace. His taste as a critic was evidently far superior to his talents as a writer. Few fragments of his writings remain; and all ancient critics are unanimous in the condemnation of his style. Augustus[686] laughed at his affected jargon of mingled Etruscan and Latin. Quintilian[687] quotes instances of his absurd inversions and transpositions; and Seneca[688] shows, by an example, its unintelligible obscurity.[689] He was a sensualist and a voluptuary,[690] and an unfaithful husband; and yet he was devotedly fond of his wife, the beautiful but ill-tempered Terentia, who had a great influence over him. He would divorce her one day only to restore her to conjugal rights on the next; and Seneca said that, though he had only one wife, he was married a thousand times. He abhorred cruelty and severity, and would not let it pass unrebuked even in the Emperor; and although he made a boast of effeminacy, he was ready to devote himself heartily to business in cases of emergency. In fact, he was a fair specimen of the man of pleasure and society: liberal, kind-hearted, clever, refined, but luxurious, self-indulgent, indolent, and volatile, with good instincts and impulses, but without principle. C. VALGIUS RUFUS.