[Footnote 34: There is usually found among the writings of Seneca a most remarkable burlesque called _Ludus de Morte Caesaris_. As to its authorship opinions will always vary, but it is a work of such undoubted genius, so interesting, and so unique in its character, that I have thought it necessary to give in an Appendix a brief sketch of its argument. We may at least _hope_ that this satire, which overflows with the deadliest contempt of Claudius, is not from the same pen which wrote for Nero his funeral oration. It has, however, been supposed (without sufficient grounds) to be the lost [Greek: Apokolokuntoois] which Seneca is said to have written on the apotheosis of Claudius. The very name is a bitter satire. It imagines the Emperor transformed, not into a God, but into a gourd--one of those "bloated gourds which sun their speckled bellies before the doors of the Roman peasants." "The Senate decreed his _divinity_; Seneca translated it into _pumpkinity_" (Merivale, _Rom. Emp_. v. 601). The _Ludus_ begins by spattering mud on the memory of the divine Claudius; it ends with a shower of poetic roses over the glory of the diviner Nero!] As has been the case not unfrequently in history, from the times of Tarquinius Priscus to those of Charles II., the death was concealed until everything had been prepared for the production of a successor. The palace was carefully watched; no one was even admitted into it except Agrippina's most trusty partisans. The body was propped up with pillows; actors were sent for "by his own desire" to afford it some amusement; and priests and consuls were bidden to offer up their vows for the life of the dead. Giving out that the Emperor was getting better, Agrippina took care to keep Britannicus and his two sisters, Octavia and Antonia, under her own immediate eye. As though overwhelmed with sorrow she wept, and embraced them, and above all kept Britannicus by her side, kissing him with the exclamation "that he was the very image of his father," and taking care that he should on no account leave her room. So the day wore on till it was the hour which the Chaldaeans declared would be the only lucky hour in that unlucky October day.