Accordingly, Mercury puts a rope round his neck, and drags him towards Tartarus. On the way they meet a vast crowd, who all rejoice except a few lawyers. It was, in fact, the funeral procession of Claudius himself, and he wants to stop and look at it; but Mercury covers him with a veil, that no one may recognize him, and drags him along. Narcissus had preceded him by a shorter route, and Mercury bids the freedman hurry on to announce the advent of Claudius to the shades. Narcissus speedily arrives among them, gouty though he was, since the descent is steep, and shouts in a loud voice, ‘Claudius Cæsar is coming.’ Immediately a crowd of shades shouts out, ‘We have found him; let us rejoice!’ They advance to meet him--among them Messalina and her lover, Mnester the pantomime, and numbers of his kinsmen whom he had put to death. ‘Why, all my friends are here!’ exclaims Claudius, quite pleased. ‘How did you all get here?’ ‘Do _you_ ask us?’ said Pedo Pompeius; ‘you most cruel of men, who killed us all?’ Pedo drags him before the judgment-seat of Æacus, and accuses him on the Cornelian law of having put to death thirty senators, three hundred and fifteen Roman knights, and two hundred and twenty-one other persons. Claudius, terrified, looks round him for an advocate, but does not see one. Publius Petronius wants to plead for him, but is not allowed to do so. He is condemned. Deep silence falls on them all, as they wait to hear his punishment. It is to be as endless as that of Sisyphus, Tantalus, and Ixion; it is to be a toil and a desire futile and frustrate and without end. He is to throw dice forever in a dice-box without a bottom! No sooner said than done! Claudius began at once to seek the dice, which forever escaped him. Every time he attempted to throw them they slipped through, and the throw, though constantly attempted, could never be performed. Then all of a sudden appears Caligula, and demands that Claudius should be recognised as his slave. He produces witnesses who swear that they have seen Caligula scourge him and slap him, and beat him. He is assigned to Caligula, who hands him over to his freedman, Menander, to be his legal assessor. Such was this daring satire, of which we can hardly estimate the audacity and wit--written as it was within a year of events which the Roman Senate and Roman people professed to regard as profoundly solemn. Nero was convulsed with laughter throughout, and was equally delighted by the insults upon his predecessor and the flattery of himself. When the speaker’s voice ceased, a burst of applause came from the lips of the hearers; and Lucan turned to the gratified Nero and repeated the lines which described his radiant beauty, his song, and the brilliant prognostications of his coming reign. ‘Yes,’ said Otho; ‘that is true poetry--