(_When corrupting disease began to sorely afflict his unworthy throat and black contagion was creeping to his very face_, Festus, himself with dry cheeks, comforted his weeping friends, and determined to seek the pools of Styx. But still he never disgraced his dutiful lips with darkling poison, nor brought on a painful, miserable end by slow hunger; nay! rather by a Roman death he completed his holy life, and dismissed his soul the nobler way. Such a death fame may well exalt above great Cato’s end; Caesar was his friend). The words _indignae fauces_ (unworthy throat) obviously point to the practice of _fellation_, whereby he had brought on himself the _pestis tabida_ and _atra lues_, (corrupting disease, black contagion), and so we have here a clear statement of the cause by one _doctus venereae cupidinis_ (learned in the passion of love), which cause was quite unknown to the _artifex medicus_ (medical practitioner). The _pia ora_ (dutiful lips) are therefore to be taken merely ironically, as also the _sancta vita_ (holy life). Even the Cinaedus, as well as the maidens who prostitute themselves in honour of Astarté, are invariably, as we have seen, described in the Old Testament as _sanctus_ (holy), and we read e. g. in Job. Ch. XXXV. 14., of a good-for-nothing, how he will die like such a _sanctus_. It was precisely this signification of _sanctus_ that led us to the idea of taking the throat affection for a secondary consequence of paederastia, especially if we understand a _double entendre_ to underlie the last words _huius Caesar amicus erat_ (Caesar was his friend). The Commentators it is true take them merely as said by way of contrast with the death of Cato of Utica, who was forced by Caesar’s enmity to take his own life, and as implying this was not the case with Festus, consequently that his suicide is so much the more remarkable[52]. However it is doubtful which Caesar is meant, whether the word is merely a Title or a proper name. In the second—and certainly this at first appeared to us to be the more likely,—view we were of course bound then to turn our attention to his character for dissoluteness. However as both _Catullus_[53] and _Suetonius_[54] represent him merely as a _Cinaedus_ in regard to the male sex, if that is to say we subscribe to the accepted opinion, we afterwards came to the conclusion it was rather the _Emperor_ generally that is spoken of here, and consequently that any other Emperor, e. g. Tiberius, or Nero, or another, might be intended. It is true that if _pathicus_ (pathic) and _omnium virorum mulier_ (wife of all men) are taken in a wider sense, there would be nothing to make the supposition impossible that Julius Caesar is pointed at. Only that perhaps another passage of _Martial_ would seem to go against this, a passage where he seeks to excuse the several excesses and vices of a certain Gaurus by instancing an exalted personage as patronizing each of them, and says finally (Bk. II. 89.):