The Satyricon: The Apocopocyntosis of the Divine Claudius Book

At a bookstore in Naples, Italy, in 2000, I bought this, in the Galleria Umberto I, after our first four weeks at Cuma, in Villa Vergilliana next to an ancient, shallow amphitheater, and not far from where we walked through the Sybillene Caves. Petronius savored the high life so much he was known as the judge of elegance.
Both works in this volume have probable, not certain authors: the second has a title perhaps worse in English than in Latin (really, Greek), "Apocolocyntosis," or "The Pumkinification" (rather than deification) of Emperor Claudius, probably by Seneca. Both works are satiric and parodic, and both mix prose and verse.

Petronius's first verse is parodic, moving from loose iambics ("scazons") to hexameters, but he advises for high achievers to improve their character, not get addicted to drink, nor to the theater (Plautus and Terence?):
"nec perditis addictus abruat vino
mentis calorem, neve plausor in scaenam
sedeat redemptus histrionis ad rictus" (p.8)
His next lines of advice I have followed, without knowing them in my youth, "det primos versibus annos," Let him give his first years to verse, whether on a Spartan farm, or in the military, or at the home of the Sirens (off of Napoli and Cuma).

In fact, Tacitus describes Petronius sleeping all day, then attending, and improving, feasts and sexual parties at night. The story's main character Encolpius has forgotten where he lives, until he's led to a "fornicem," a whore-house, where he sees out the door his "little brother" Giton, a boy lover; his other friend Ascyltus is led by a respectable-looking guy to the same place, where he "coepit rogare stuprum," asked Ascyltus to rape him.
In 65 AD, Petronius was arrested for treason at Cuma, where he slowly took his own life, conversing with his friends in light verse, and even dining, before dying. Beyond the wealth of his work, Asteroid 3244 Petronius is named for him.

The Deification of Roman Emperors created temples, like wall-builder Hadrian's in Rome (and there are remains of other emperor-temples). In "Apocolocyntosis Divi Cludii," Seneca (probable author) mocks this deification, specifically of Claudius, who died "ante diem III idus Octobris," the 3rd day before the Ides of October, 54 A.D. That day the Senate of Rome* proclaimed Claudius a god, Divus Claudius. Seneca writes Claudius can be seen making his way to heaven "non passibus aequis," on unequal strides, since the Empreor was lame in his right foot.
Seneca waxes poetical about the season, "Iam Phoebus breviore via...victrix augebat Cynthia regnum," Now the Sun its shorter course drew...and the victorious Moon increased her reign. Grim winter drives winter out, and Bacchus ages, "carpebat raras serus vindemitur uvas," (only 5 feet of the dactyllic hexameter), Now the late picker snatches the grapes. From such dignified verse, the writer descends to bathos in prose, "Guess I'd make myself better understood if I just said, "It was October 13, 54." ("Puto magis intellegi, si dixero: mensis erat October, dies III idus Octobris" which was his very first sentence.)(Apoc.I, p.438)

Harsh satire, direct inversion, on god of wit Mercury's, admiring Claudius' "ingenio." But since Mercury also guided toward Hades, maybe he simply planned to accompany him. Then satire on Claudian programs, like expanding Roman citizenship to a whole large tribe in Gallia--the reason one of the Fates, Clotho, wants to put off his death a few hours until everybody can wear the toga, as a citizen: "Graecos, Gallos, Hispanos, Britannos." She also swears to dismiss accompanied the man who so lately was followed by thousands. Then the writer turns to verse, heavy spondaic dactyls, "Haec ait et turpi convolvens stamina fuso/ abrupit..." So she said, winding the thread around the spindle, snaps it off (442).

Claudius's death brings on Nero, handsome musician and singer. Phoebus Apollo even says "ille, mihi similis vultu similisque decore/ nec cantu nec voce minor" He's like me in face, my fellow in voice and song. (444) Claudius is ushered out with a line of Greek verse parodying Euripides about the joy of leaving Earth's miseries, here the dead leaving to cries of joy. Also, one final, common indignity, at Claudius's end (in two senses) he cries out, "Vae me, puto concacavi me," Oh my, I think I've left caca.
In the next part, Seneca says he won't bother telling about what followed the demise, because everybody recalls his own joy. But he will inform what happened in "caelo," Jove was told of a new arrival, strongly built, but "bene canum," pretty grey, who wagged his head a lot, and "pedem dextram trahere," dragged his right foot. Again, the old attitude toward handicap, as if witness to character flaw, not genetic imprint.

Claudius was delighted to find literary people there, since he had written histories of the Etruscans and Carthaginians, 20 books and 8 books respectively, in Greek. The writer instersperses Greek verses from Homer, and "simple Hercules" would have been fooled, but for the goddess of Fever/ Malaria nearby. She says, "His tale is all lies, he was born at Lugduni/Lyon." (450) Rome had several shrines to Fever, and the Latin student Riccioli in 17C Italy who named the lunar features called a circular "macula/sea" the Mare Crisium/ Sea of Fevers. (See the appendum to my "Worlds of Giordano Bruno")

Claudius had a bad accent, perhaps from being raised in Gallia, "Quid diceret, nemo intellegebat," but he ordered goddess Fever to be taken away, and gave his usual thumb-back command to decapitate the goddess. Hercules asks him where he was born, but cannot understand his answer; Hercules says Claudius has arrived "huc, ubi mures ferum rodent," here, where mice gnaw iron (proverb, "Nowhereland"). Claudius liked presiding over judicial cases, recalls all the effort he put in before Hercules' temple, whole days in July and August. How excruciating for the Emperor to have to listen to lawyers, "cum causidicos audirem diem et noctem," day and night.(454). Claudius had also married Agrippina, his brother's daughter, his niece.
When they get to Jove's temple, they hear Janus, who sees the future and the past,speaking of the majesty of the gods, how they shouldn't give the honor to just anybody. In fact, anyone falsely declared a god should be turned over to gladiators, to train in flogging him with a rod.
Augustus says since he was made a god, he hasn't uttered a single word. Then he asks why Claudius put so many to death without hearing the accused's side of the story, "antiquam audires, damnasti" (464). Messalina duped Claudius into executing many, including two of the writer's own mistresses named Julia. Also, Claudius executed his father in law Appius Silanus, his two sons-in-law, Pompeius Magnus, his daughter's mother-in-law, and finally Messalina herself, and many others too numerous to mention, " ceteros quorum numeros iniri non potuit." (468)
One man he killed, Crassus, "vero tam fatuum, ut etiam posset" was truly so foolish tht he could have been an emperor. (466) Or a US President, like the witless one in 2020.
For all his killings, Claudius is immediately banished from the heavens, and Mercury took him to the lower regions, as Catullus says, "unde negant redire quemquem" (3.12), or as Shakespeare translates it, "from whose bourne no traveller returns" (Hamlet). When the emperor sees his own funeral procession, he knows he's dead; he hears them singing in anapaests (but beyond my scansion--mostly spondees I say). The song records Claudius's conquests, the Parthians in Iran, the Britons:

Ille Britannos ultra noti
litora ponti
et caeruleos scuta Briganteas
dare Romuleis colla catenis...
Vosque poetae lugete novi. (472)
He those Britons beyond the shores
of the sea we know, he chained their necks
like slaves, as with blue-shielded Brigants

By the way, Vulcan/Haephestus had, like Claudius, a famous limp he got when his father Jove/Zeus threw him out of heaven holding his foot, falling by sunset on the Lemnos isle. Milton puts it,
"Men called him Mulciber, and how he fell
From heaven, they fabled, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements: from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve.
And with the setting Sun, dropped from the Zenith
Like a falling star..." Paradise Lost, Bk I.


* The Senate meetingplace still exists in the Forum, the Curia Julia which held the 100 active Senators (out of 600) when erected in 44 B.C. Its erection was interrupted when Julius Caesar was assasinated outside the Theatre of Pompeii (close to the Campo dei Fiori, with its statue to my Giordano Bruno) and the building completed under Augustus.