XIX. Since fortune has chosen that we should outlive him, we will now proceed with the sequel, and will show our readers by example, as far as we can, that (as we have intimated above) "it is in general a man's manners that bring him his fortune."290 For Atticus, though content in the equestrian rank in which he was born, became united by marriage with the emperor Julius's son, whose friendship he had previously obtained by nothing else but his elegant mode of living, by which he had charmed also other eminent men in the state, of equal birth,291 but of lower fortune; for such prosperity attended Caesar, that fortune gave him everything that she had previously bestowed upon any one, and secured for him what no citizen of Rome had ever been able to attain. Atticus had a granddaughter, the daughter of Agrippa, to whom he had married his daughter in her maidenhood; and Caesar betrothed her, when she was scarcely a year old, to Tiberius Claudius Nero, son of Drusilla, and step-son to himself; an alliance which established their friendship, and rendered their intercourse more frequent.

XXI. After he had completed, in such a course of life, seventy-seven years, and had advanced, not less in dignity, than in favour and fortune (for he obtained many legacies on no other account than his goodness of disposition), and had also been in the enjoyment of so happy a state of health, that he had wanted no medicine for thirty years, he contracted a disorder of which at first both himself and the physicians thought lightly, for they supposed it to be a tenesmus, and speedy and easy remedies were proposed for it; but after he had passed three months under it without any pain, except what he suffered from the means adopted for his cure, such force of the disease fell into the one intestine,292 that at last a putrid ulcer broke out through his loins. Before this took place, and when he found that the pain was daily increasing, and that fever was superadded, he caused his son-in-law Agrippa to be called to him, and with him Lucius Cornelius Balbus and Sextus Peducaeus. When he saw that they were come, he said, as he supported himself on his elbow, "How much care and diligence I have employed to restore my health on this occasion, there is no necessity for me to state at large, since I have yourselves as witneses; and since I have, as I hope, satisfied you, that I have left nothing undone that seemed likely to cure me, it remains that I consult for myself. Of this feeling on my part I had no wish that you should be ignorant; for I have determined on ceasing to feed the disease; as, by the food and drink that I have taken during the last few days, I have prolonged life only so as to increase my pains without hope of recovery. I therefore entreat you, in the first place, to give your approbation to my resolution, and in the next, not to labour in vain by endeavouring to dissuade me from executing it." |447

XXII. Having delivered this address with so much steadiness of voice and countenance, that he seemed to be removing, not out of life, but out of one house into another,----when Agrippa, weeping over him and kissing him, entreated and conjured him "not to accelerate that which nature herself would bring, and, since he might live some time longer,293 to preserve his life for himself and his friends,"----he put a stop to his prayers, by an obstinate silence. After he had accordingly abstained from food for two days, the fever suddenly left him, and the disease began to be less oppressive. He persisted, nevertheless, in executing his purpose; and in consequence, on the fifth day after he had fixed his resolution, and on the last day of February, in the consulship of Cnaeus Domitius and Caius Sosius, he died.294 His body was carried out of his house on a small couch, as he himself had directed, without any funereal pomp, all the respectable portion of the people attending, 295 and a vast crowd of the populace. He was buried close by the Appian way, at the fifth milestone from the city, in the sepulchre of his uncle Quintus Caecilius. |448

An excerpt from the text which mentions Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa in conjunction with Titus Pomponius Atticus. It mentions that Agrippa had his choice of any wife, but aligned himself with Atticus. Unfortunately, the excerpt gives no insight into Agrippa's reasons for this union. Is it that Agrippa knew Atticus prior to Agrippa being involved with Octavianus and the triumvirate? Sadly, we may never know, but one can only hope that some obscure text will be rediscovered which may explain Agrippa's motives.

XII. By such conduct, therefore, he brought it to pass, that Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, who was united in the closest intimacy with young Caesar, though, through his own interest and Caesar's influence, he had power to choose a wife from any rank whatever, fixed on a connexion with him rather than |440 with any other, and preferred a marriage with the daughter of a Roman knight to an alliance with the most noble of women. The promoter of this match (for it is not to be concealed) was Mark Antony, when triumvir for settling the state; but though Atticus might have increased his property by the interest of Antony, he was so far from coveting money, that he never made use of that interest except to save his friends from danger or trouble;277 a fact which was eminently remarkable at the time of the proscription; for when the triumviri, according to the way in which things were then managed, had sold the property of Lucius Saufeius, a Roman knight, who was of the same age as Atticus, and who, induced by a love for the study of philosophy, had lived with him several years at Athens, and had valuable estates in Italy, it was effected by the efforts and perseverance of Atticus, that Saufeius was made acquainted by the same messenger, that "he had lost his property and had recovered it." He also brought off Lucius Julius Calidus, whom I think I may truly assert to have been the most elegant poet that our age has produced since the death of Lucretius and Catullus, as well as a man of high character, and distinguished by the best intellectual accomplishments, who, in his absence, after the proscription of the knights, had been enrolled in the number of the proscribed by Publius Volumnius, the captain of Antony's engineers, on account of his great possessions in Africa; an act on the part of Atticus, of which it was hard to judge at the time, whether it were more onerous or honourable. But it was well known that the friends of Atticus, in times of danger, were not less his care in their absence than when they were present.