Here, as summer burned into autumn, the sick man lived in brooding silence, feeling his strength waste, and holding to the world only by one desire.
The household comprised his unwedded sister Petronilla, a lady in middle age, his nephew Basil, and another kinsman, Decius, a student and an invalid; together with a physician, certain freedmen who rendered services of trust, a eunuch at the Command of Petronilla, and the usual body of male and female slaves.

Some score of glebe-bound peasants cultivated the large estate for their lord's behoof.
Notwithstanding the distress that had fallen upon the Roman nobility, many of whom were sunk into indigence, the chief of the Anicii still controlled large means; and the disposal of these possessions at his death was matter of interest to many persons--not least to the clergy of Rome, who found in the dying man's sister a piously tenacious advocate.

Children had been born to Maximus, but the only son who reached mature years fell a victim to pestilence when Vitiges was camped about the City.

There survived one daughter, Aurelia.

Her the father had not seen for years; her he longed to see and to pardon ere he died.