In the 'year of the four emperors' (69 A.D.) he is found as the friend and counsellor of Vitellius;[594] his conduct, we are told, was wise and courteous. He subsequently won renown by his admirable administration of the province of Asia, and then retired from the public gaze to the seclusion of a life of study.[595] The amiability and virtue which marked the leisure of his later years wiped out the dark stain that had besmirched his youth. 'Men hastened to salute him and to do him honour. When not engaged in writing, he would pass the day in learned converse with the friends and acquaintances--no mere fortune-hunters--who continually thronged the chambers where he would lie for long hours upon his couch. His verses, which he would sometimes submit to the judgement of the critics by giving recitations, show diligence rather than genius. The increasing infirmities of age led him to forsake Rome for Campania; not even the accession of a new princeps induced him to quit his retirement. It is not less creditable to Caesar to have permitted than to Silius to have ventured on such a freedom. He was a connoisseur even to the verge of extravagance. He had several country houses in the same district, and often abandoned those which he already possessed, if some new house chanced to catch his fancy. He had a large library, and a fine collection of portraits and statues, and was an enthusiastic admirer of works of art which he was not fortunate enough to possess. He kept Vergil's birthday with greater care than his own, especially when he was at Naples, where he would visit the poet's tomb with all the veneration due to the temple of a god.' He died[596] in his Neapolitan villa of self-chosen starvation. His health had failed him. He was afflicted by an incurable tumour, and ran to meet death with a fortitude that nothing could shake. 'His life was happy and prosperous to his last hour; his one sorrow was the death of his younger son; the elder (and better) of his sons, who survives him, has had a distinguished career, and has even reached the consulate.' From Epictetus[597] we gather, what we might infer from the manner of his death, that he was a Stoic. From Martial,[598] who addresses him in the interested language of flattery as the leading orator of his day, and as the maker of immortal verse, we learn that he was the proud possessor of the Tusculan villa of Cicero, and that he actually owned the tomb of the poet whom he loved so well.