The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius
Apocolocyntosis
Headnote
The Apocolocyntosis is Seneca’s one surviving venture into Menippean satire — prose studded with parodic verse — and the strangest item in his corpus: a savage comic lampoon of the emperor Claudius, written within months of the death he had himself, as Nero’s tutor, helped to eulogize in earnest. Claudius died in October AD 54, almost certainly poisoned at Agrippina’s hand; Seneca composed the solemn funeral oration that Nero delivered, and then, it seems, this. The title is a joke that resists translation: apotheosis is the deifying of a dead emperor, and apocolocyntosis swaps the god for a colocynta, a gourd or pumpkin — a “pumpkinification,” the elevation of Claudius not to godhead but to vegetable. The gourd never actually appears in the text as we have it; the title alone carries the deflation.
The plot is a divine farce. Claudius limps up to heaven and applies for admission to the company of the gods; the senate of Olympus debates his candidacy with all the procedural solemnity of the Roman curia; he is voted down, hauled off by Mercury, marched through the underworld past a parade of the friends and senators he had put to death, tried before Aeacus under the very law against murderers that he had so freely used, condemned “with only one side heard” — the standing charge against Claudius as a judge — and sentenced to an eternity of rattling dice in a box with no bottom. The satire’s targets are exact and unsparing: Claudius’s physical infirmity and slurred, stammering speech, his limp, his deafness to no one’s defense, the bloodbath of his reign (the bill of indictment tallies thirty-five senators and two hundred twenty-one knights), his parade of powerful freedmen, his pedantic antiquarianism, and his cruelty dressed as law. Framing the whole is a passage of straight panegyric for the new young emperor: the Fates spin Nero’s golden thread, and Apollo himself promises an age of light — the flattery against which Claudius’s humiliation is measured.
The piece is a sustained exercise in register-shifting, and the translation keeps the shifts sharp. Mock-epic hexameters inflate a date in October into a cosmic event; Hercules, sent to interrogate the newcomer, breaks into the senarii of Senecan tragedy itself and describes Claudius’s birthplace, Lyon, in the grand manner; Homer, Catullus, Ennius, Varro, and Horace are quoted and twisted; and a running seam of Greek tags — the formulas of the Odyssey, the doctrine of the Epicurean god, the proverb that all things are full of friends — is laced through the Latin, kept here in English with the source noted in the apparatus. The bureaucratic parody is rendered in its own deadpan officialese (the senatorial motion, the indictment, the formula of condemnation), and the bawdy and the contemptuous are left at full strength, as the Latin gives them. The text transmitted in this witness carries the work in sections, with several of the intervening passages (notably the goddess Fever’s intervention and Augustus’s prosecuting speech) not preserved here; the rendering follows the source as it stands.
What was done in heaven on the thirteenth of October, in the new year, at the start of a most happy age, I wish to hand down to memory. Nothing will be conceded to grudge or to favor. This is the plain truth. If anyone should ask how I know it — first, if I do not wish to, I will not answer. Who is going to compel me? I know I was made a free man from the day that fellow met his end who had made the proverb come true, that a man ought to be born either a king or a fool. If I feel like answering, I will say whatever comes onto my tongue. Who has ever demanded sworn witnesses of a historian? Still, if it should be necessary to produce an authority, ask the man who saw Drusilla on her way to heaven: the same man will say he saw Claudius too, making his journey “with steps not even.” Like it or not, he is bound to see everything that goes on in heaven: he is the curator of the Appian Way, by which, as you know, both the deified Augustus and Tiberius Caesar went to the gods. If you question him, he will tell it to you alone; before more than one he will never say a word. For ever since he swore in the senate that he had seen Drusilla climbing to heaven, and no one believed him for all his good news, he declared in set terms that he would not report what he had seen — not even if he had seen a man murdered in the middle of the forum. What I heard from him on that day I bring back sure and clear, as I hope to keep him safe and prosperous.
Quid actum sit in caelo ante diem III idus Octobris anno novo, initio saeculi felicissimi, volo memoriae tradere. Nihil nec offensae nec gratiae dabitur. Haec ita vera. Si quis quaesiverit unde sciam, primum, si noluero, non respondebo. Quis coacturus est? Ego scio me liberum factum, ex quo suum diem obiit ille, qui verum proverbium fecerat, aut regem aut fatuum nasci oportere. Si libuerit respondere, dicam quod mihi in buccam venerit. Quis unquam ab historico iuratores exegit? Tamen si necesse fuerit auctorem producere, quaerito ab eo qui Drusillam euntem in caelum vidit: idem Claudium vidisse se dicet iter facientem non passibus aequis. Velit nolit, necesse est illi omnia videre, quae in caelo aguntur: Appiae viae curator est, qua scis et divum Augustum et Tiberium Caesarem ad deos isse. Hunc si interrogaveris, soli narrabit: coram pluribus nunquam verbum faciet. Nam ex quo in senatu iuravit se Drusillam vidisse caelum ascendentem et illi pro tam bono nuntio nemo credidit, quod viderit, verbis conceptis affirmavit se non indicaturum, etiam si in medio foro hominem occisum vidisset. Ab hoc ego quae tum audivi, certa clara affero, ita illum salvum et felicem habeam.
Now Phoebus had drawn in by a shorter path the rising of his light, and the hours of dark sleep were growing, and now victorious Cynthia was enlarging her realm, and ugly winter was plucking the welcome glories of rich autumn, and — Bacchus bidden to grow old — the late vintager was picking the few remaining grapes. Now Phoebus had divided the world’s circle midway with his car and, nearer to night, was shaking his weary reins, leading the light down its slanting track.
Iam Phoebus breviore via contraxerat ortum lucis, et obscuri crescebant tempora somni, iamque suum victrix augebat Cynthia regnum, et deformis hiemps gratos carpebat honores divitis autumni, iussoque senescere Baccho carpebat raras serus vindemitor uvas. lam medium curru Phoebus diviserat orbem et propior nocti fessas quatiebat habenas obliquo flexam deducens tramite lucem:
This she said, and, winding the threads on an ugly spindle, broke off the royal span of that stupid life. But Lachesis, her hair bound up, her locks adorned, crowning her hair and her brow with Pierian laurel, takes white threads from a snowy fleece to be guided by a lucky hand — and, drawn out, they took on a new color. The sisters marvel at the work: the cheap wool changes into precious metal, a golden age comes down along the lovely thread. There is no limit for them: they draw the lucky fleece and rejoice to fill their hands — the task is sweet. Of its own accord the work hastens, and with no labor the soft threads come down the twisted spindle. They surpass the years of Tithonus, surpass even Nestor’s. Phoebus is present and helps with song and rejoices in what is to come, and now in joy plies the plectrum, now hands over the wool. He holds them intent with his song and beguiles their toil. And while they praise too much his lyre and their brother’s strains, their hands spun more than their wont, and the praised work transcends the destinies of men. “Do not take them away, you Fates,” says Phoebus, “let him pass the spans of mortal life, that man, like me in face and like in grace, in song and voice no less. To the weary he will grant happy ages, and break the silence of the laws. Like the Morning Star scattering the fleeing constellations, or like the Evening Star rising when the stars return, like the Sun, when — the shadows loosed — ruddy Dawn has led in the day and, bright, looks upon the world and drives his first axle from the starting gate: such a Caesar is at hand, such a Nero shall Rome now behold. His radiant face blazes with a tempered brightness, and his shapely neck with the hair that flows down over it.” To send them from the house rejoicing, speaking words of good omen.
Haec ait et turpi convolvens stamina fuso abrupit stolidae regalia tempora vitae. At Lachesis redimita comas, ornata capillos, Pieria crinem lauro frontemque coronans, candida de niveo subtemina vellere sumit felici moderanda manu, quae ducta colorem assumpsere novum. Mirantur pensa sorores: mutatur vilis pretioso lana metallo, aurea formoso descendunt saecula filo. Nec modus est illis, felicia vellera ducunt et gaudent implere manus, sunt dulcia pensa. Sponte sua festinat opus nulloque labore mollia contorto descendunt stamina fuso. Vincunt Tithoni, vincunt et Nestoris annos. Phoebus adest cantuque iuvat gaudetque futuris, et laetus nune plectra movet, nune pensa ministrat. Detinet intentas cantu fallitque laborem. Dumque nimis citharam fraternaque carmina laudant, plus solito nevere manus, humanaque fata laudatum transcendit opus. Ne demite, Parcae Phoebus ait "vincat mortalis tempora vitae ille, mihi similis vultu similisque decore nec cantu nec voce minor. Felicia lassis saecula praestabit legumque silentia rumpet. Qualis discutiens fugientia Lucifer astra aut qualis surgit redeuntibus Hesperus astris, qualis cum primum tenebris Aurora solutis induxit rubicunda diem, Sol aspicit orbem lucidus, et primos a carcere concitat axes: talis Caesar adest, talem iam Roma Neronem aspiciet. Flagrat nitidus fulgore remisso vultus, et adfuso cervix formosa capillo." χαίροντας, εὐφημοῦντας ἐκπέμπειν δόμων.
Who are you among men, and from where? Where is your city and your parents? A wind, bearing me from Ilium, brought me near the Cicones. There I sacked the city and destroyed its people.
τίς πόθεν εἶς ἀνδρῶν, πόθι τοι πόλις ἠδὲ τοκῆες; Ἰλιόθεν με φέρων ἄνεμος Κικόνεσσι πέλασσεν. ἔνθα δʼ ἐγὼ πόλιν ἔπραθον, ὤλεσα δʼ αὐτούς.
Declare at once from what seat you claim your birth, lest, struck down by this club, you fall to the ground; this club has often slaughtered savage kings. What is it you now sound with uncertain voice? What country, what race brought forth that wobbling head? Speak out. Indeed, while seeking the far-off realms of the three-bodied king, from where, from the Hesperian sea, I drove the famous herd to the Inachian city, I saw, overhanging two rivers, a ridge which Phoebus always views with his rising turned upon it, where the huge Rhône flows with headlong stream, and the Saône, doubting which way to drive its course, silently laves its banks with quiet shallows. Is that the land that nursed your breath?
exprome propere, sede qua genitus cluas, hoc ne peremptus stipite ad terram accidas; haec clava reges saepe mactavit feros. Quid nunc profatu vocis incerto sonas? Quae patria, quae gens mobile eduxit caput? Edissere. Equidem regna tergemini petens longinqua regis, unde ab Hesperio mari Inachiam ad urbem nobile advexi pecus, vidi duobus imminens fluviis iugum, quod Phoebus ortu semper obverso videt, ubi Rhodanus ingens amne praerapido fluit, Ararque dubitans, quo suos cursus agat, tacitus quietis adluit ripas vadis. Estne illa tellus spiritus altrix tui?"
“No wonder you made an assault on the senate-house: nothing is barred to you. Only tell us what kind of god you want this fellow to be made. He cannot be an Epicurean god: that sort ‘neither has any trouble of its own nor gives any to others.’ A Stoic one? How can he be ‘round,’ as Varro says, ‘without a head, without a foreskin’? And yet there is something of the Stoic god in him — now I see it: he has neither heart nor head. By Hercules, if he had asked this favor of Saturn, whose month he kept all year round, a very Saturnalian prince, he would not have got it — much less from Jupiter, whom, so far as it lay in him, he condemned for incest. For he killed his son-in-law Silanus on the ground that the man preferred to call his sister — the most delightful of all girls, whom everyone called Venus — by the name of Juno. ‘Why,’ he says, ‘his sister, I ask you?’ Study your lessons, blockhead: at Athens it is allowed by halves, at Alexandria altogether. ‘Because at Rome,’ you say, ‘the mice lick the millstones.’ Is this man to set our crooked ways straight? He does not know what goes on in his own bedroom, and now he ‘scans the regions of the sky’? He wants to be made a god: it is not enough that he has a temple in Britain, that the barbarians worship him and pray to him as a god ‘to find a merciful fool.’”
Non mirum quod in curiam impetum fecisti: nihil tibi clausi est. Modo dic nobis, qualem deum istum fieri velis. Ἐπικούρειος θεὸς non potest esse: οὔτε αὐτὸς πρᾶγμα ἔχει τι οὔτε ἄλλοις παρέχει; Stoicus? Quomodo potest ’rotundus’ esse, ut ait Varro, ’sine capite, sine praeputio’? Est aliquid in illo Stoici dei, iam video: nec cor nec caput habet. Si mehercules a Saturno petisset hoc beneficium, cuius mensem toto anno celebravit, Saturnalicius princeps, non tulisset illud, nedum ab Iove, quem quantum quidem in illo fuit, damnavit incesti. Silanum enim generum suum occidit propterea quod sororem suam, festivissimam omnium puellarum, quam omnes Venerem vocarent, maluit Iunonem vocare. ’Quare’ inquit ’quaero enim, sororem suam?’ Stulte, stude: Athenis dimidium licet, Alexandriae totum. ’Quia Romae’ inquis ’mures molas lingunt.’ Hic nobis curva corriget? quid in cubiculo suo faciat, nescit, et iam ’caeli scrutatur plagas’? Deus fieri vult: parum est quod templum in Britannia habet, quod hunc barbari colunt et ut deum orant μωροῦ εὐιλάτου τυχεῖν?
At last it came into Jupiter’s mind that, while private persons are lingering in the senate-house, senators may not state an opinion or hold debate. “I,” he said, “conscript fathers, had given you leave to ask questions, and you have made a sheer shambles of it. I want you to keep the discipline of the senate. This fellow, whatever he is, what will he think of us?” When that one was dismissed, Father Janus is asked his opinion first. He had been appointed afternoon consul for the first of July, a man as crafty as you please, who always sees “at once before and behind.” He said much, eloquently — for he lived in the forum — which the shorthand-writer could not keep up with, and so I do not report it, that I may not set down in other words what he said. He said much about the greatness of the gods: this honor ought not to be given to the common run. “Once,” he said, “it was a great thing to become a god: now you have turned the thing into a Farce. And so, that I may not seem to give my vote against the person rather than the matter, I move that from this day forward no one be made a god out of those who eat the fruit of the field, or out of those whom the grain-giving earth feeds. Whoever, against this decree of the senate, shall be made, called, or painted a god, I move that he be handed over to the hobgoblins and, at the next show, be flogged with rods among the newly hired gladiators.” Next to be asked his opinion is Diespiter, son of Vica Pota, himself also consul-elect, a petty money-changer: by this trade he kept himself, he used to sell little citizenships. To him Hercules came up nicely and tweaked his earlobe. And so he votes in these words: “Whereas the deified Claudius is joined by blood to the deified Augustus, and no less to the deified Augusta his grandmother, whom he himself ordered to be a goddess, and far surpasses all mortals in wisdom, and whereas it is in the public interest that there be someone who can together with Romulus ‘gobble down boiling turnips,’ I move that from this day the deified Claudius be a god, as fully as anyone before him made so by the best of right, and that this matter be added to Ovid’s Metamorphoses.” Opinions varied, and Claudius seemed to be carrying the vote. For Hercules, who saw that his iron was in the fire, kept running this way and that and saying: “Do not grudge me this — it is my own affair that is at stake; then, if you want anything, I will do it in turn: one hand washes the other.”
Tandem Iovi venit in mentem, privatis intra curiam morantibus senatoribus non licere sententiam dicere nec disputare. Ego inquit p. c. interrogare vobis permiseram, vos mera mapalia fecistis. Volo ut servetis disciplinam curiae. Hic qualiscunque est, quid de nobis existimabit? Illo dimisso primus interrogatur sententiam Ianus pater. Is designatus erat in kal. Iulias postmeridianus consul, homo quantumvis vafer, qui semper videt ἅμα πρόσσω καὶ ὀπίσσω. Is multa diserte, quod in foro vivebat, dixit, quae notarius persequi non potuit, et ideo non refero, ne aliis verbis ponam, quae ab illo dicta sunt. Multa dixit de magnitudine deorum: non debere hunc vulgo dari honorem. Olim inquit magna res erat deum fieri: iam famam mimum fecistis. Itaque ne videar in personam, non in rem dicere sententiam, censeo ne quis post hunc diem deus fiat ex his, qui ἀρούρης καρπὸν ἔδουσιν, aut ex his, quos alit ζείδωρος ἄρουρα.. Qui contra hoc senatus consultum deus factus, dictus pictusve erit, eum dedi Laruis et proximo munere inter novos auctoratos ferulis vapulare placet. Proximus interrogatur sententiam Diespiter Vicae Potae filius, et ipse designatus consul, nummulariolus: hoc quaestu se sustinebat, vendere civitatulas solebat. Ad hunc belle accessit Hercules et auriculam illi tetigit. Censet itaque in haec verba: Cum divus Claudius et divum Augustum sanguine contingat nec minus divam Augustam aviam suam, quam ipse deam esse iussit, longeque omnes mortales sapientia antecellat, sitque e re publica esse aliquem qui cum Romulo possit ’ferventia rapa vorare,’ censeo uti divus Claudius ex hac die deus sit, ita uti ante eum qui optimo iure factus sit, eamque rem ad metamorphosis Ovidi adiciendam. Variae erant sententiae, et vide batur Claudius sententiam vincere. Hercules enim, qui videret ferrum suum in igne esse, modo huc modo illuc cursabat et aiebat: Noli mihi invidere, mea res agitur; deinde tu si quid volueris, in vicem faciam; manus manum lavat.
He hurled him, seized by the foot, from the divine threshold — to that place from which they say no one returns.
ῤῖψε ποδὸς τεταγὼν ἀπὸ βηλοῦ θεσπεσίοιο illuc unde negant redire quemquam.
Pour out your tears, raise up your wailing, let the forum resound with grief’s outcry: fallen is a man of beautiful good sense, than whom none other in all the world was braver. He could in headlong course outrun the swift; he could rout the rebel Parthians, and chase the Persian with light arrows, and with sure hand draw the bowstring that would pierce the headlong foe with a small wound, and the painted backs of the fleeing Mede. He bade the Britons beyond the shores of the known sea, and the blue-shielded Brigantes, give their necks to the chains of Romulus, and Ocean himself tremble at the new law of the Roman axe. Weep for the man, than whom none other could more quickly learn a case — with only one side heard, often with neither. What judge now will hear lawsuits the whole year round? To you he will yield, leaving his seat, he who gives law to the silent people, holding Crete’s hundred towns. Beat your breasts with mourning palms, O pleaders, a venal breed. And you, new poets, mourn, and you above all who win great profits from the rattled dice-box.
"Fundite fletus, edite planctus, resonet tristi clamore forum: cecidit pulchre cordatus homo, quo non alius fuit in toto fortior orbe. Ille citato vincere cursu poterat celeres, ille rebelles fundere Parthos levibusque sequi Persida telis, certaque manu tendere nervum, qui praecipites vulnere parvo figeret hostes, pictaque Medi terga fugacis. Ille Britannos ultra noti litora ponti et caeruleos scuta Brigantas dare Romuleis colla catenis iussit et ipsum nova Romanae iura securis tremere Oceanum. Deflete virum, quo non alius potuit citius discere causas, una tantum parte audita, saepe ne utra. Quis nunc iudex toto lites audiet anno? Tibi iam cedet sede relicta, qui dat populo iura silenti, Cretaea tenens oppida centum. Caedite maestis pectora palmis, o causidici, venale genus. Vosque poetae lugete novi, vosque in primis qui concusso magna parastis lucra fritillo."
Claudius was delighted with his own praises and wished to watch longer. The Talthybius of the gods lays a hand on him and drags him off, his head muffled so that no one could recognize him, across the Campus Martius, and between the Tiber and the Covered Way he goes down to the underworld. Narcissus the freedman had already gone ahead by a shortcut to receive his patron, and as he came he ran to meet him — gleaming, fresh as he was from the bath — and said: “Gods coming to men?” “Be quicker,” said Mercury, “and announce that we are on the way.” Quicker than the word, Narcissus flies off. Everything is downhill; the descent is easy. And so, gouty as he was, in a moment he reached the door of Dis, where Cerberus lay — or, as Horace says, “the hundred-headed beast.” He is a little disturbed — he had been used to keeping a whitish dog as a pet — when he saw that black, shaggy dog, by no means the kind you would wish to meet in the dark, and in a loud voice said, “Claudius is coming.” With applause they come forward singing: “We have found him; let us rejoice together.” Here were Gaius Silius consul-elect, Iuncus the ex-praetor, Sextus Traulus, Marcus Helvius, Trogus, Cotta, Vettius Valens, Fabius — Roman knights whom Narcissus had ordered led off to death. In the middle of this singing crowd was Mnester the pantomime, whom Claudius for decency’s sake had cut down to size. To Messalina — the rumor quickly spread that Claudius had come — they all flock: first of all the freedmen Polybius, Myron, Harpocras, Amphaeus, Pheronactus, all of whom Claudius had sent on ahead so as to be nowhere unprovided. Then two prefects, Justus Catonius and Rufrius Pollio. Then his friends Saturninus Lusius and Pedo Pompeius and Lupus and Celer Asinius, men of consular rank. Last of all his brother’s daughter, his sister’s daughter, sons-in-law, fathers-in-law, mothers-in-law — clearly all his blood-kin. And forming a column they come to meet Claudius. When Claudius saw them, he cried out: “All is full of friends! How did you get here?” Then Pedo Pompeius: “What are you saying, most cruel of men? You ask how? Who else sent us here but you, the slayer of all your friends? Let us go to court — I will show you the benches here.”
Delectabatur laudibus suis Claudius, et cupiebat diutius spectare. Inicit illi manum Talthybius deorum et trahit capite obvoluto, ne quis eum possit agnoscere, per campum Martium, et inter Tiberim et viam tectam descendit ad inferos. Antecesserat iam compendiaria Narcissus libertus ad patronum excipiendum, et venienti nitidus, ut erat a balineo, occurrit et ait: Quid di ad homines? celerius inquit Mercurius et venire nos nuntia. Dicto citius Narcissus evolat. Omnia proclivia sunt, facile descenditur. Itaque quamvis podagricus esset, momento temporis pervenit ad ianuam Ditis, ubi iacebat Cerberus vel ut ait Horatius belua centiceps. Pusillum perturbatur—subalbam canem in deliciis habere adsueverat—ut ilium vidit canem nigrum, villosum, sane non quem velis tibi in tenebris occurrere, et magna voce Claudius inquit veniet. Cum plausu procedunt cantantes: εὑρήκαμεν, συγχαίρωμεν. Hic erat C. Silius consul designatus, Iuncus praetorius, Sex. Traulus, M. Hel vius, Trogus, Cotta, Vettius Valens, Fabius equites R. quos Narcissus duci iusserat. Medius erat in hac cantantium turba Mnester pantomimus, quem Claudius decoris causa minorem fecerat. Ad Messalinam—cito rumor percrebuit Claudium venisse—convolant: primi omnium liberti Polybius, Myron, Harpocras, Amphaeus, Pheronactus,quos Claudius omnes, necubi imparatus esset, praemiserat. Deinde praefecti duo Iustus Catonius et Rufrius Pollio. Deinde amici Saturninus Lusius et Pedo Pompeius et Lupus et Celer Asinius consulares. Novissime fratris filia, sororis filia, generi, soceri, socrus, omnes plane consanguinei. Et agmine facto Claudio occurrunt. Quos cum vidisset Claudius, exclamat: πάντα φίλων πλήρη quomodo huc venistis vos? Tum Pedo Pompeius: Quid dicis, homo crudelissime? Quaeris, quomodo? Quis enim nos alius hue misit quam tu, omnium amicorum interfector? In ius eamus, ego tibi hic sellas ostendam.
He leads him to the tribunal of Aeacus, who was holding inquiry under the Cornelian law passed concerning cutthroats. He demands that Aeacus enter his name; he posts the indictment: senators killed, 35; Roman knights, 221; the rest “as many as the grains of sand and dust.” He finds no advocate. At last Publius Petronius comes forward, an old boon companion of his, a man eloquent in the Claudian tongue, and asks for an adjournment. It is not granted. Pedo Pompeius accuses with great outcry. The defender begins to want to reply. Aeacus, a most just man, forbids it, and condemns him with only the one side heard, and says: “If he should suffer what he did, the justice would be straight.” A vast silence fell. All were stunned, thunderstruck at the novelty of the thing; they kept saying this had never been done. To Claudius it seemed more unfair than novel. There was long debate about the kind of penalty, what he ought to suffer. There were those who said that Sisyphus had done his hauling long enough, that Tantalus would die of thirst unless someone helped him, that the wheel of wretched Ixion should at some point be braked. It pleased no one to grant a release to any of the old offenders, lest Claudius too should ever hope for the like. It was decided that a new penalty must be set up: some fruitless labor must be devised for him, and the semblance of some craving with no fulfillment. Then Aeacus orders him to play at dice with a perforated box. And already he had begun to chase the ever-fleeing dice and to make no headway.
Ducit illum ad tribunal Aeaci: is lege Cornelia quae de sicariis lata est, quaerebat. Postulat, nomen eius recipiat; edit subscriptionem: occisos senatores XXXV, equites R. CCXXI, ceteros ὅσα ψάμαθός τε κόνις τε.. Advocatum non invenit. Tandem procedit P. Petronius, vetus convictor eius, homo Claudiana lingua disertus, et postulat advocationem. Non datur. Accusat Pedo Pompeius magnis clamoribus. Incipit patronus velle respondere. Aeacus, homo iustissimus, vetat, et illum altera tantum parte audita condemnat et ait: αἴκε πάθοι τά τʼ ἔρεξε, δίκη κʼ ἰθεῖα γένοιτο. Ingens silentium factum est. Stupebant omnes novitate rei attoniti, negabant hoc unquam factum. Claudio magis iniquum videbatur quam novum. De genere poenae diu disputatum est, quid illum pati oporteret. Erant qui dicerent, Sisyphum satis diu laturam fecisse, Tantalum siti periturum nisi illi succurreretur, aliquando Ixionis miseri rotam sufflaminandam. Non placuit ulli ex veteribus missionem dari, ne vel Claudius unquam simile speraret. Placuit novam poenam constitui debere, excogitandum illi laborem irritum et alicuius cupiditatis speciem sine effectu. Tum Aeacus iubet illum alea ludere pertuso fritillo. Et iam coeperat fugientes semper tesseras quaerere et nihil proficere.
For as often as he was about to throw, the box rattling, both dice would slip away, the bottom drawn out from under. And when he ventured to cast the gathered knucklebones again, like one about to throw, and forever reaching after, they cheated his trust: the die runs off, and through his very fingers the cheat slips away in ceaseless theft. So, when the summit of the high mountain is all but touched, the weight rolls back, fruitless, down Sisyphus’s neck.
Nam quotiens missurus erat resonante fritillo, utraque subducto fugiebat tessera fundo. Cumque recollectos auderet mittere talos, fusuro similis semper semperque petenti, decepere fidem: refugit digitosque per ipsos fallax adsiduo dilabitur alea furto. Sic cum iam summi tanguntur culmina montis, irrita Sisyphio volvuntur pondera collo.