He had long been prepared to do so, adds a Roman, for he knew the Romans and the word of kings.

The year of his death is uncertain; probably he died in the latter half of the year 571, at the age of sixty-seven.
When he was born, Rome was contending with doubtful success for the possession of Sicily; he had lived long enough to see the West wholly subdued, and to fight his own last battle with the Romans against the vessels of his native city which had itself become Roman; and he was constrained at last to remain a mere spectator, while Rome overpowered the East as the tempest overpowers the ship that has no one at the helm, and to feel that he alone was the pilot that could have weathered the storm.

There was left to him no further hope to be disappointed, when he died; but he had honestly, through fifty years of struggle, kept the oath which he had sworn when a boy.
Death of Scipio About the same time, probably in the same year, died also the man whom the Romans were wont to call his conqueror, Publius Scipio.

On him fortune had lavished all the successes which she denied to his antagonist--successes which did belong to him, and successes which did not.

He had added to the empire Spain, Africa, and Asia; and Rome, which he had found merely the first community of Italy, was at his death mistress of the civilized world.