_C. Plinius Macro Suo S._ Quam multum interest, quid a quo fiat! Eadem enim facta claritate vel obscuritate facientium aut tolluntur altissime, aut humillime deprimuntur. Navigabam per Larium nostrum, quum senior amicus ostendit mihi villam, atque etiam cubiculum, quod in lacum prominet. Ex hoc, inquit, aliquando municeps nostra cum marito se praecipitavit. Causam requisivi. _Maritus ex diutino morbo circa velanda corporis ulceribus putrescebat: uxor, ut inspiceret, exegit: neque enim quemquam fidelius indicaturam, possetne sanari. Vidit, desperavit: hortata est, ut moreretur, comesque ipsa mortis, dux immo et exemplum et necessitas fuit._ Quod factum ne mihi quidem, qui municeps, nisi proxime auditum est; non quia minus illa clarissimo Arriae facto, sed quia minor est ipsa. Vale. (Caius Pliny to his friend Macer, Greeting.—What a vast difference it makes, by whom a particular thing is done! For the very same actions in virtue of the fame or obscurity of the doers are raised to the topmost pinnacle or brought down to the lowest depth. I was sailing along our Lake of Larius, when my companion and elder pointed out a certain country house to me, nay, a particular bed-room, which projects into the Lake. From this chamber, he said, some time ago a fellow-countrywoman of ours threw herself, along with her husband. I asked the reason. _The husband, it seemed, in consequence of a disease of long standing was rotting with ulcers on the private parts of the body. The wife demanded a right to look; for she thought no one else likely to give a more conscientious opinion than herself as to whether he could be cured. She saw, and despaired of recovery; so she urged him to die, and herself was companion of his death, giving in fact at once incitement, example and compulsion to the deed._ This achievement I had never, though a man of the country, heard of till that moment; not because it was a whit less glorious than Arria’s renowned exploit, but solely because the doer was less famous. Farewell). [53] _Catullus_, Carm. 57: Pulchre convenit improbis cinaedis Mamurrae pathicoque, Caesarique. (An excellent understanding exists between the vile _cinaedi_, the pathic Mamurra and Caesar). [54] _Suetonius_, Vita Jul. Caesaris chs. 49, 51, 52., where Curio, the Elder, calls him (Caesar) “omnium mulierum virum, et omnium virorum mulierem” (husband of all women, and wife of all men). The same indeed was said also of _Alcibiades_. In _Athenaeus_, Deipnos. bk. XII. p. 535., we read in a fragment of the Comic Poet _Pherecrates_: Οὐκ ὢν ἀνὴρ γὰρ Ἀλκιβιάδης, ὡς δοκεῖ, ἀνὴρ ἁπασῶν τῶν γυναικῶν ἐστι νῦν. (For not being a man at all, Alcibiades, it seems, is now husband of all our women). [55] _Catullus_, Carm. 80.: