Seneca

“ Hercules at the first sight was a good deal disturbed, even though he was one who didn’t fear any sort of monsters. When he beheld the aspect of this unknown specimen, its extraordinary gait, its voice belonging to no earthly creature but more like that of the monsters of the deep, hoarse and inarticulate, he thought that a thirteenth labor had come to him. When he looked more carefully, however, it appeared to be a man. He approached him and thus spoke, as was easiest for a Greek chap:
Who and whence art thou, and where are thy city and parents? ”

“ And so as a Gaul ought to do, he captured Rome. Take my word for it, he was born at Lugudunum, where Licinus reigned for many years. But you, who have tramped more lands than any wandering muleteer, ought to know men from Lugudunum and that there are a good many miles between the Xanthus and the Rhone.” At this point Claudius fired up and angrily grumbled as loudly as he could. What he was saying, nobody understood, except that he commanded Fever to be led away to punishment. ”

“ Claudius, seeing the mighty hero, forgot his nonsense and perceived that while no one had been a match for him at Rome, here he didn’t have the same advantage; a cock is master only on his own dunghill. So, as well as could be made out, this is what he appeared to say: “I did hope that you, Hercules, bravest of the gods, would stand by me before the others, and if any one had asked me who could vouch for me, I should have named you, who know me best. ”

“ Still, if I must produce my authority, apply to the man who saw Drusilla going heavenward; he will say he saw Claudius limping along in the same direction. Willy-nilly, he has to see everything that happens in heaven; for he is the superintendent of the Appian road, by which you know both the divine Augustus and Tiberius Caesar went to join the gods. If you ask this man he will tell you privately; in presence of more than one he’ll never speak a word. ”

“ It’s no wonder you have made an assault upon the senate-house; nothing is closed to you. Only tell us what sort of a god you want him to be made. He cannot be an Epicurean god, neither having himself any care nor causing any to others. A Stoic? How can he be ‘round,’ as Varro says, ‘without head or prepuce’? Yet there is something in him of the Stoic god, now I see. He has neither heart nor head. By Hercules, though, if me had asked this favor of Saturn, whose festival month the Saturnalian prince kept going the whole year long, he wouldn’t have got it ”

“ The opinions were various, and Claudius seemed to be winning the vote. For Hercules, who saw that his iron was in the fire, kept running to this one and that one, saying, “Don’t go back on me; this is my personal affair. And then if you want anything, I’ll do it in my turn. One hand washes the other.”
10Then the divine Augustus arose at the point for expressing his opinion, and discoursed with the utmost eloquence. “I call you to witness, Conscript Fathers,” said he, “that since I was made a god, I have never addressed you; I always mind my own business. ”

“ For he put to death Silanus his son-in-law, just because the man preferred that his sister, prettiest of all the girls, so that everybody called her Venus, should be called his Juno. ‘Why his sister?’ you say,—in fact, I ask it. Think, you blockhead. At Athens that sort of thing is halfway allowed; at Alexandria altogether. ‘But since at Rome,’ you say, ‘the mice live on dainties.’ He’s going to straighten our crooked ways! He doesn’t know what goes on in his own chamber, and now ‘he searches the regions of heaven.’ He wants to become a god. Isn’t he satisfied that he has a temple in Britain ”

“ Phoebus already had passed the highest point of his circuit,
Wearily shaking the reins as his car drew nearer the evening,
Leading away the half-spent light on its down-dipping pathway.
3Claudius began to give up the ghost, but couldn’t find a way out for it. Then Mercury, who had always had a fancy for his character, led aside one of the three Fates and said: “Why, O hard-hearted woman, do you let the wretched man be tormented? Isn’t he ever to have a rest, after being tortured so long? It is the sixty-fourth year that he has been afflicted with life. ”

“ As long as you make such gods as he, nobody will believe that you are gods yourselves. In short, Conscript Fathers, if I have behaved myself honorably among you, if I have not answered anybody in an ungentlemanly manner, avenge my injuries. ”

“ To gather great gains by shaking the dice-box.”
13Claudius was delighted with his praises, and desired to stay longer to look on. But the Talthybius of the gods laid a hand on him and pulled him away, with his head covered so that nobody could recognize him, across the Campus Martius, and between the Tiber and the Arcade went down to the lower world. The freedman Narcissus had already gone ahead by a short cut to be ready to receive his patron, and as the latter was approaching he ran up, all sleek from the bath, and said: “What’s this? Gods, among men?” ”