CHAP. 43. (42.)—REMARKABLE EXAMPLE OF VICISSITUDES.

As to examples of the vicissitudes of Fortune, they are innumerable. For what great pleasures has she ever given us, which have not taken their rise in misfortunes? And what extraordinary misfortunes have not taken their first rise in great pleasures? (43.) It was fortune that preserved the Senator, M. Fidustius,[1] who had been proscribed by Sylla, for a period of thirty-six years. And yet he was proscribed a second time; for he survived Sylla, even to the days of Antony, and, as it appears, was proscribed by him, for no other reason but because he had been proscribed before.

1. We have a similar account of the fate of Fidustius in Dion Cassius, by whom he is named Filuscius.—B. He was at length slain by order of Antony.