The Emperor Pius died in his seventieth year. The immediate occasion of his death was--not breakfast nor _cæna_, but something of the kind. He had received a present of Alpine cheese, and he ordered some for supper. The trap for his life was baited with toasted cheese. There is no reason to think that he ate immoderately; but that night he was seized with indigestion. Delirium followed; during which it is singular that his mind teemed with a class of imagery and of passions the most remote (as it might have been thought) from the voluntary occupations of his thoughts. He raved about the State, and about those kings with whom he was displeased; nor were his thoughts one moment removed from the public service. Yet he was the least ambitious of princes, and his reign was emphatically said to be bloodless. Finding his fever increase, he became sensible that he was dying; and he ordered the golden statue of Prosperity, a household symbol of empire, to be transferred from his own bedroom to that of his successor. Once again, however, for the last time, he gave the word to the officer of the guard; and, soon after, turning away his face to the wall against which his bed was placed, he passed out of life in the very gentlest sleep, "_quasi dormiret, spiritum reddidit_;" or, as a Greek author expresses it, _kat iso hypno to malakotato_. He was one of those few Roman emperors whom posterity truly honored with the title of _anaimatos_ (or bloodless;) _solusque omnium prope principum prorsus sine civili sanguine et hostili vixit_. In the whole tenor of his life and character he was thought to resemble Numa. And Pausanias, after remarking on his title of _Eusebæs_ (or Pius), upon the meaning and origin of which there are several different hypotheses, closes with this memorable tribute to his paternal qualities--_doxæ de emae, kai to onoma to te Kyros pheroito an tos presbyteros, Pater anthropon kalemenos_: _but, in my opinion, he should also bear the name of Cyrus the elder--being hailed as Father of the Human Race_.