Dacier and others translate them literally,
as I have done. Kaltwasser translated them, "and already the cocks
crowed." He adds that the other translation is wrong, because it is
said immediately after, that it was still night. But what follows as
to the night does not prove that it was dark; it rather implies that
there was not much sleeping time that remained before morning. Cocks
sometimes crow in the night, it is true, but Plutarch evidently means
to show by the expression that the morning was dawning, and so the
birds might be singing, if there were any birds in Utica. The matter
is appropriate for a dissertation, which would be as instructive as
many other dissertations on matters of antiquity.]
[Footnote 757: Appian (_Civil Wars_, ii. 98, &c.) tells the story of
his death differently. He says that the wound was sewed up, and that
being left alone, he tore his bowels out. But it is improbable that,
if the wound had been sewed up, he would have been left alone. The
story of Dion Cassius (43, c. 11) is the same. See Florus, iv. 2, 71,
who says that he killed himself "circa primam vigiliam."]
[Footnote 758: As he died in B.C. 46, he was in the forty-ninth year
of his age. His chatacter requires no comment; it has been fully
delineated by Plutarch. A single letter of Cato to Cicero is extant
(_Ad Diversos_, xv. 5); and a letter of such a man is worth reading,
though it be short.
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