[12] While they were going down the
Via Sacra, Mercury inquired what such a crowd of people could mean: whether it
was Claudius’ funeral. And indeed it was a most elegant and elaborate 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
Gay-coated Medes turned their backs to disaster.
Conqueror he of Britons beyond the
Shores of the known sea:
Even the dark-blue-shielded Brigantes
Forced he to bend their necks to the fetters
That Romulus forged, and Ocean himself
To tremble before the Roman dominion.
Mourn for the man than whom no one more quickly
Was able to see the right in a lawsuit,
Only at hearing one side of the quarrel,—
Often not either. Where is the judge now
Willing to listen to cases the year through?
Thou shalt be given the office resigned thee
By him who presides in the court of the shades,
The lord of a hundred cities Cretaean.
Smite on your breasts, ye shysters forsaken,
With hands of despair, O bribe-taking crew;
Ye too, half-fledged poets, now should bewail;
And ye above all, who lately were able
To gather great gains by shaking the dice-box.”
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