Page:The Satire of Seneca on the Apotheosis of Claudius.djvu/160

 display, so that you would easily recognize that a god was being carried off to burial. There was so great a crowd of trumpeters, hornblowers, and players upon every kind of brass instruments, so great a concord, that even Claudius could hear it. Everybody was joyful and in high spirits. The Roman people walked about like free men. Only Agatho and a few pettifoggers were weeping, but their grief was plainly heartfelt. The real lawyers were coming out of their hiding-places, pale and thin, scarcely drawing breath, like people who were just coming to life again. One of them, when he had seen the pettifoggers getting their heads together and lamenting their calamity, came up and said, “I told you the Saturnalia wouldn’t last forever.” Claudius, when he saw his own funeral, understood that he was dead. For in a mighty great chorus they were chanting a dirge in anapests:

“Pour forth your tears, lift up woful voices; Let the Forum echo with sorrowful cries. Nobly has fallen a man most sagacious, Than whom no other ever was braver, Not in the whole world. He in the quick-sped race could be victor Over the swiftest; he could rebellious Parthians scatter, chase with his flying Missiles the Persian, steadiest-handed, Bend back the bow which, driving the foeman Headlong in flight, should pierce him afar, while