"Phœbus the god hath said it; he shall pass Victoriously his mortal life, like me In countenance, and like me in my beauty; In song my rival, and in suasive speech. A happier age he bringeth to the weary, For he will break the silence of the laws. Like Phosphor when he scares the flying stars, Like Hesper rising, when the stars return; Or as, when rosy night-dissolving dawn Leads in the day, the bright sun looks abroad, And bids the barriers of the darkness yield Before the beaming chariot of the morn,-- So Cæsar shines, and thus shall Rome behold Her Nero; mild the lustre of his face, And neck so fair with loosely-flowing curls." Claudius meanwhile pumped out the air-bubble of his soul, and thereafter, as a phantasma, ceased to be visible. "He expired while he was listening to the comedians; so that, you perceive, I have good reason for dreading these people." His last words were--"_Vae me, puto concavi me_." Claudius is dead, then. It is announced to Jupiter, that a tall personage, rather gray, has arrived; that he threatens nobody knows what, shakes his head perpetually, and limps with his right leg; that the language he speaks is unintelligible, being neither that of the Greeks nor that of the Romans, nor the tongue of any known race. Jupiter now orders Hercules, since he has vagabondized through all the nations of the world, and is likely to know, to see what kind of mortal this may be. When Hercules, who had seen too many monsters to be easily frightened, set eyes on this portentous face, and strange gait, and heard a voice, not like the voice of any terrestial creature, but like some sea-monster's--hoarse, bellowing, confused, he was at first somewhat discomposed, and thought that a thirteenth labour had arrived for him. On closer examination, however, he thought the portent had some resemblance to a man. He therefore asked, in Homer's Greek-- "Who art thou, of what race, and where thy city?" Claudius was mightily rejoiced to meet with philologers in heaven, and hoped he might find occasion of referring to his own histories. [He had written twenty books of Tyrrhenian, and eight of Carthaginian history, in Greek.] He immediately answers from Homer also, sillily quoting the line-- "From Troy the wind has brought me to the Cicons."