eyes of his compassion will alight on me also. Truly those thunderbolts are just which the thunderstricken have themselves learned to adore. May the immortals long indulge him to the world! May he rival the deeds of Augustus and exceed his years! While still resident among us, may death never cross his threshold! Distant be the day, and reserved for the tears of our grandchildren, when his divine progenitors demand him for the heavens which are his own.” [Illustration: HADRIAN (FROM THE STATUE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM)] Such were the phrases, sonorous and unctuously polished, which Polybius was doubtless expected to recite in the ears of the imperial pedant. Standing high as he still did in the favour of Claudius and Messallina, he had the means, and was perhaps not without the will, to recommend them with all his interest, and intercede in the flatterer’s behalf. Yet Claudius, it would seem, remained wholly unmoved by a worship more vehement than Ovid’s, and enhanced still more by the unquestioned reputation of its author. Whatever had been the motives of his sentence against Seneca, it was not by flattery that he could be swayed to reverse it. Surely, as far as we are competent to judge, we must think the better both of his firmness and his sense. Shortly afterwards Polybius was himself subverted by the caprice of Messallina; Messallina in her turn was overthrown by Agrippina; and it was not till the sister of Julia had gained the ascendant that Seneca obtained at her instance the grace he had vainly solicited through the good offices of the freedman. THE DEAD CLAUDIUS SATIRISED BY SENECA But however little Claudius may have relied on the sincerity of this brilliant phrase-monger, he could scarce have anticipated the revulsion of sentiment to which so ardent a worshipper would not blush to give utterance on his demise. It was natural of course that the returned exile should attach himself to his benefactress; from her hands he had received his honours, by her he was treated with a confidence which flattered him. No doubt he was among the foremost of the courtiers who deserted the setting to adore the rising luminary. Yet few, perhaps, could believe that no sooner should Claudius be dead, ere yet the accents of official flattery had died away which proclaimed him entered upon the divine career of his ancestors, than the worshipper of the living emperor should turn his deification into ridicule, and blast his name with a slander of unparalleled ferocity. There is no more curious fragment of antiquity than the _Vision of Judgment_ which Seneca has left us on the death and deification of Claudius. [Illustration: “SENECA” (From a bust in the Naples Museum)]