[11] It’s not the
way in heaven. Here is Jupiter, now, who has been ruling for so many years. One
person’s leg he has broken, Vulcan’s whom
Snatching him by the foot, he hurled from the heavenly threshold;
and he got angry at his wide and hung her up, but he didn’t kill her, did he?
But you have put to death Messalina, to whom I was as
much a great-uncle as I was to you. ‘I don’t know,’ you say? May the gods be
hard on you! It is more shameful that you didn’t know it than that you killed
her. He has never ceased to follow up the dead-and-gone C. Caesar. The latter
had killed his father-in-law; Claudius here, his son-in-law besides. Gaius forbade the sons of Crassus
to be called Magnus; this man returned him the name, but took off his head. He
killed in one household Crassus, Magnus, Scribonia, the Tristionias, and Assario; and they were aristocrats too, and Crassus besides so stupid that he was even qualified to
reign. Now do you want to make this man a god? Look at his body, born when the
gods were angry. And finally, if he can say three consecutive words together,
he can have me as his slave. Who will worship this god? Who will believe in
him? 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. This is the
resolution which I have to offer;” and he read as follows from his tablet:
“Since the divine Claudius has killed his father-in-law Appius
Silanus, his two sons-in-law Magnus Pompeius and L. Silanus, his
daughter’s father-in-law Crassus Frugi,
a man as like himself as one egg is to another, Scribonia
his daughter’s mother-in-law, his wife Messalina, and
others too numerous to mention, I propose that strict punishment be meted out
to him, that he be granted no rest from adjudicating cases, and that he be got
out of the way as soon as possible, departing from heaven within thirty days
and from Olympus within three.”
There was a division of the house, and this resolution was carried. Without
delay the Cyllenian dragged him by the nape of his
neck off from heaven toward the lower regions,
“Whence they say no man returns.”
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