Hercules' said: `Now listen to me, you, and stop making a fool of yourself. Do you know what sort of place this is? It's where mice nibble holes in iron, that's the sort of place it is. So let's have your story straight, or I'll spill some of that nonsense from a hole in the top of your head.' To impress his personality on Claudius still more strongly, he struck a melodramatic attitude and began rolling out the following lines:
Quick, the whole truth! Where were you born and why? Tell me at once, or with this club you die,. That's cracked the skull of many a dusky king.; (What's that? Speak up! I can't make out a thing.) Where did you, get that wiggly-waggly head? Is there a town where freaks like you are bred? But stay, once in the course of my tenth quest (I had to travel out to the far West And bring back with me to a town of Greece. The oxen of three-bodied Geryones), I noticed a large hill, which when he rises The very first thing that the Sun God spies is. I mean the place where headlong-tumbling Rhone Is met by shallow, wandering Saone, Most vague of streams - the town between these two, Tell me was it responsible for you?
His delivery was most bold and animated, but all the same he had little
confidence in himself' and feared the `fool's blow', as the saying is.
However, Claudius, finding himself face to face with a big hero like Hercules, changed his tone, and began to realize that what he said herb; did not have anything like the same force as at Rome; that a cock, in fact, is worth most on its own dung-hill. So this is what he said, or at least what he was understood to say: `O Hercules, bravest of all the Gods, I had hoped you would stand by me; and when your fellow Gods called for someone to vouch for me, you were the person I was: going to name. And you know me very well really, don't you? Think for a moment. I'm the man who used to sit judging cases in front of your temple day after day, even in July and August, the hottest months of the year. You know what a miserable time I had there, listening to the barristers talking on and on all day and night. If you had fallen among that lot, though you're the strongest of the strong, I'm sure you'd have much preferred to clean out the Augean stables again. I reckon that I drained away far more sewage than you did. But since I want ...'
[Some pages are missing here. A group of Gods all talking together are now addressing Hercules: he has forcibly introduced Claudius, whom he has consented to champion, into the Heavenly Senate.]
You even burgled' Hell once and went off with Cerberus on your back: so it's not surprising that you managed to burst your way into this House. No lock could ever keep you out.'
`- But just tell us, what sort of a God do you want this fellow to be made? He can't be a God in the Epicurean style: for Diogenes Laertius'; says: "God is blessed and incorruptible and neither takes trouble nor causes trouble to anyone." As for a Stoic God, that sort, according to Varro, is a perfectly rounded whole - in fact completely globular without either a head or sexual organs. He can't be that sort.'
`- Or can he? If you ask me, there is something' of the Stoic God about him: he has no head, and no heart either.'
`- Well, I swear that even if he had addressed this petition to Saturn instead of Jove he would never have been granted it - though when he was alive he kept Saturn's All Fools Festival going all the year round,a truly Saturnalian Emperor'.
`- And what sort of a chance do you think he has with Jove, whom he as good as condemned for incest? I mean, he killed his son-in-law Silanus just because Silanus had a sister, the most delightful girl in the world, whom everyone called Queen Venus, but he preferred to call Juno.'
Claudius said: `Yes, why did he do it? I want to know why. Really, now his own sister!'
`-Look it up in the book, stupid! Don't you know that you may sleep with your half-sister at Athens, and that at Alexandria it can be a whole one?'
`Well, at Rome,' said Claudius, `mice are just mice. They lick meal. '
Is this drawing-master teaching us to improve our curves? Why, he doesn't even know what goes on in his own bedroom.'
`- And now he's conning the secret realms of sky and wanting to be a God.'
`A God, eh? I suppose he isn't satisfied with his temple in Britain where the savages worship him and humbly pray "Almighty Fool, have mercy upon us!" '
It occurred to Jove that senators were not allowed to debate while strangers were present in the House. `My Lords,' he said, `I gave you permission to cross-examine this person, but by the noise you are making anyone would mistake this for the cheapest sort of knocking-shop. Please observe the rules of the House. I don't know who this person is, but whatever will he think of us?'
So Claudius was taken out again and Father Janus was called upon to open the debate. He had been made Consul for the afternoon of July 1st next, and was a brilliant fellow, with a pair of eyes in the back of his head.' He had a temple in the Market Place, so naturally he made a splendid speech: but it was too fast for the official recorder to take down, so I will not attempt to report it in full, not wishing to distort anything he said. At any rate, his theme was the Majesty of the Gods and that one ought not to cheapen Godhead by random distribution of the honour. `It was a great thing once to be a God,' he said, `but now you've brought it down to the level of jumping-beans. I don't want you to think that I am speaking against the deification of any one particular man; I am speaking quite generally; and to make this clear I move that, from now on, Godhead be conferred on none of those who, in Homer's phrase,
eat the harvest of the field,
nor yet of those whom, again in a phrase of Homer's,
nourishes the fruitful soil.
After my motion has been voted on and pronounced law, it should be made a criminal offence for any man to be made, displayed, or portrayed as a God, and any offender against the law should, I suggest, be handed-over to the Hobgoblins and at the next Public Show be flogged with a birch among the new sword-fighters.'
The next to be called upon was Diespiter, the Underground God, son of Vica Pota, the God of Victory. He had been chosen for the Consulship and was a professional moneylender: he also used to sell citizenships in a quiet way. Hercules went up to him with a friendly smirk and whispered something in his ear, so he came out with the following speech: `The God Claudius is related to the God Augustus. The Goddess Augusta,'' whom he deified himself, is his grandmother; so, as he is by far the most learned man who has ever lived, and since as a matter of public policy someone ought to join the God Romulus in
eating boiled turnips with a will,
I propose that the God Claudius be regularly enrolled among the Olympians and enjoy the privileges and perquisites of Godhead in its fullest traditional sense, and that a note to that effect be inserted in Ovid's Metamorphoses.'
The House, was divided, and it looked as though Claudius would -', carry a majority of votes; because Hercules saw that he had a good chance now and went rushing about from one bench to another saying: .I, `Now, please don't oppose me. I am personally interested in this measure. If you vote my way now, I'll do as much for you some other day. You know the proverb, "Hand washes hand."'
Then the God Augustus arose, for it was now his turn, and spoke with the greatest eloquence. 'I call on' you,, my Lords, to witness that ever since the day of my official deification I have not uttered a single word. I always mind my own business. But now I cannot keep up the pretence of impartiality any longer, or conceal the sorrow which shame makes deeper still. Was it for this that I made peace over land and sea, and put a truce to Civil War, and endowed Rome with a new constitution, and embellished her with stately public buildings, that ... that ... that ... Words fail me, my Lords. Nothing that I might: utter could possibly match the depth of my feelings in this matter. In, my indignation I must, borrow a phrase from the eloquent Messala Corvinus he was elected City Warden and resigned after a few days, saying "I am ashamed of my authority''. I feel the same: when I see how the authority that I established has been abused I am ashamed of ever having exercised it. This fellow, my Lords, who looks as though he hadn't guts - enough to worry a fly, sat in my place and called himself by my name and ordered men off to execution just as easily as a dog squats. But I won't speak of all his victims, fine men though they were: I am so preoccupied with family disasters that really I have no time to waste over public ones. I'll only speak about family disasters,' then, because "a radish* may know no Greek, but I do": I at least know one Greek proverb, "The knee is nearer than the shin." This impostor, this pseudo-Augustus, has done me the kindness of killing two great-granddaughters' of mine, Lesbia with the sword and Helen by starvation. And one great grandson, Lucius Silanus. (Here I expect you, my Lord Jove, to be fair in a bad cause, which after all is your own.) Now answer me, you God Claudius, why did you condemn; so many men and women to death without first calling on them to defend themselves? What sort of justice is that? Is it the sort that is done in Heaven? Why, here's Jove has been Emperor all these centuries and never did more than once: break Vulcan's leg: