Page:The Satire of Seneca on the Apotheosis of Claudius.djvu/157

 Then 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. And I can no longer disguise my feelings nor conceal the distress that shame makes all the greater. Was it for this that I secured peace on land and sea? For this did I make an end of civil wars? For this did I found the city on a basis of law, adorn it with monuments, that—what to say, Conscript Fathers, I cannot discover. All words are beneath my indignation. So in desperation I must take to the phrase of that most clever man, Messala Corvinus, ‘I am ashamed of my authority.’ This fellow, Conscript Fathers, who doesn’t seem to you as if he could disturb a fly, used to kill people as easily as a dog stops to rest. But why should I enumerate the many great men? I have no heart to lament public calamities when I behold those of my own family. And so I will pass over the former and describe these. For I know, even if my sister doesn’t know [as they say in Greek], my knee is nearer than my shin. That fellow whom you see there, hiding under my name for so many years, has shown his gratitude to me by slaying the two Julias, my great-granddaughters, one by the sword, the other by starvation, and L. Silanus, one of my great-great-grandsons. We shall see, Jupiter,