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[3]
Therefore he immersed himself many times a-day in water to cleanse and scour his person. But it was of no use; for the change gained upon him rapidly, and the swarm of vermin defied all purification.
We are told that in very ancient times, Acastus the son of Pelias was thus eaten of worms and died, and in later times, Alcman the lyric poet, Pherecydes the theologian, Callisthenes of Olynthus, who was kept closely imprisoned, as also Mucius the jurist; and if mention is to be made of men who had no excellence to commend them, but were notorious for other reasons, it is said that the runaway slave who headed the servile war in Sicily,1 Eunus by name, was taken to Rome after his capture, and died there of this disease.
1 B.C. 134; cf. Diodorus, xxxiv. 2, 23.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives. with an English Translation by. Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1916. 4.
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