LXV. Aurelius Victor relates, the emperor Claudius the second, knowing that the books of the Sibyls promised great victories and prosperity to the empire, if the first man in the senate would voluntarily surrender himself to be sacrificed for the good of his country, which coming to be talked of, the eldest senator offered himself to become the victim; but the emperor would not accept the tender, chusing rather to reserve to himself the glory of that sacrifice, alledging, that the prediction applied to him, as prince and chief of the senate. The same author adds, that for this magnanimous action, a statue of gold was erected to his memory in the Temple of Jupiter, and a bust of gold in the senate. He says further, the name of the senior senator, who offered his life to obtain the completion of the Sibyl prediction, was Pompeius Bassus. Neither Trebelius Pollio, nor Eutropius, make the least mention of all this; but on the contrary, have both affirmed, this Emperor died of a natural disease. LXVI. That manifestation of heroic fortitude, in the action of biting the tongue off with the teeth in the torture, is attributed by Jamblicus, to Timyca Pythagorica; by Tertullian, to the Courtesan Leæna; by Valerius Maximus, Pliny, Diogenes Laertius, and Philo Judæus, to the Philosopher Anaxarchus; and by St. Jerome, in his Life of Saint Paul the first Hermit, to a holy Martyr[5]. LXVII. Some say that Placidia caused her brother, the emperor Honorius, to sign an instrument, by which he granted this princess in marriage to one of his meanest officers, and that she afterwards complaining to the emperor of this indignity, he denied that he had ever done any such thing; upon which she shewed him his sign manual, and by this instance, illustrated and corrected the facility with which he had been used to sign papers he never read; for she herself had prevailed on him to set his hand to the instrument, upon suggesting to him, that it contained his assent to a matter of a very different nature. Others put this stratagem in the head of Pulcheria, who betrayed her brother the emperor Theodosius into signing a deed, by which he consented to sell his wife the empress Eudoxia for a slave.