Emperor
Claudius (1 August 10 BC – 13 October AD 54) has always had a bad press amongst
Roman historians: a ruler dominated by women and addicted to dice playing.
Apart from that he was also ridiculed for having difficulty with walking, may
be caused due to some illness as a child and because of this his mother and
grandmother made fun of him and there was no maternal affection – his father
Drusus died when Claudius was a little baby.
But he
was also a prolific writer of books on history, a passion he must have taken
over from Livy, who was his teacher. He also wrote an Etruscan dictionary, but
nothing has survived, this to the great regret of modern historians and
etruscologists.
The fact
that a satire was written about him did not help the popularity of Claudius
either. Seneca is the alleged writer of this satire, the Apocolocyntosis (divi) Claudii, literally `The
Pumpkinification of (the Divine)
Claudius’. The pumpkin was symbol for stupidity and the title alludes to the
apotheosis or deification of emperors after their death. But though his
authorship is not quite certain, Seneca had some good reasons to dislike
Claudius, as the latter sent him into exile. It was under pressure of his
fourth wife Agrippina the Younger that Claudius called Seneca back to Rome to
make him the teacher of Agrippina’s son from an earlier marriage: Nero. Seneca
had the good sense or the lack of courage to write this satire after the death
of Claudius, poisoned by Agrippina.
The Apocolocyntosis
is a mixture of prose and poetry, the
so-called Menippean satire. It is set on the moment Claudius dies and tells
about the consternation at the Olympus when Claudius arrives there. From there
Claudius is sent to Hades and there he is recognized by people who were killed
on his request. Brought before Aeacus, judge of the underworld, he is sentenced
to fulfil a useless task: playing dice with a box without bottom!
As for
me, I like playing dice too as well as playing carts, so I wonder what
punishment I will get in the afterlife. To my credit I must say that I have
never sent a philosopher into exile, nor have I married four times.
Apocolocyntosis
15
Metrum:
hexameter.
[15] 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.
Then the
deceased emperor Caligula comes, not to rescue him, but to use him as slave,
working at the law court of the underworld. It is said of Claudius that he
often acted as a judge, but took his decision after hearing only one side,
trespassing against a Roman juridical saying: audite alteram partem `hear the other side too’.
missurus erat: about to throw
fritillus: dice-box
tessera: dice
subduco subduxi subductum: to take away
auderet: normally audeo
means `to dare’, but here it is more like cupio
`to desire’.
talus: knuckle-bone
(dice were made of knuckle-bones.)
fundo fudi fusum, to pour out, throw
peto petii/petivi petitum: to aim ad, seek
fusuro similis semper semperque petenti: similar to one who always throwing
(dice) and always collecting
decepere = deceperunt
decepere fidem: the dice deceived his confidence
fallax, fallacis: deceptive, fallacious
adsiduus: constant
dilabor dilapsus sum : to fall, tumble, escape
alea: dice
furtum: theft, trick
culmen culminis (n.): top, summit
irrita Sisyphio volvuntur pondera collo: litt. `the useless stones are
being rolled from the Sisiphian neck’, but should be understood as `in vain,
the stones (pondus ponderis, n.) are
being rolled from Sysiphus’ neck (collum).’
A felicitous
translation by W.H. D. Rouse (1913):
"For
when he rattled with the box, and thought he now had got 'em,
The
little cubes would vanish thro' the perforated bottom.
Then he
would pick 'em up again, and once more set a-trying:
The dice
but served him the same trick: away they went a-flying.
So still
he tries, and still he fails; still searching long he lingers;
And every time the tricksy things go slipping
thro' his fingers.
Just so
when Sisyphus his rock once gets atop the mountain,
To his
dismay he sees it come down on his poor head bounding!"
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