“Just say what kind of god you want Claudius to be,” said the deified Augustus to the gods in heaven, “An Epicurean one? Impossible, as the Greek goes, ‘They take no shit and give no shit.’ Stoic, then? But how could he be ‘Round,’ says Varro, ‘with no head, not even the smallest protrusion’? Ah, now I see it, there is something about him of a Stoic god: neither hide nor hair of a head or heart.

            “Jesus Christ, if he asked Saturn for this favor he wouldn’t get it, even after celebrating Saturnalia all year—a real Prince of Saturn—nor from Jove, whom he judged for his incest… as it were.

            “And for what? ‘Because,’ you say, ‘in Rome the mice at least get to lick the millstone.’ He is going to be the one who makes it all add up? He doesn’t know what goes on in his own closet, and now he’s going to give the heavens an audit? He wants to be a god. Why, so they can pray to find a merciful moron like they would a penny on the ground?

            “In summary, let him just say a couple things briefly and he can have me as his maid. Who would worship this god? Who would believe in him? To the rest of you, as long as you make men like these gods, no one will believe you are gods. I move he be officially damned and not be given a stay of proceedings: first of all, he shall be deported, and then he shall leave heaven within thirty days and Olympus within three.”

            Unopposed.

            Without delay, Mercury hauled him by the collar out of heaven down to hell.

            While they went down the sacred way, Mercury wondered what this concourse of humans meant—Claudius’ funeral? And it was all so fancy and expensive, you could plainly see that they were burying a god: trumpets, horns, a brass section for every genre in so big a jam, so great a symphony that even Claudius could hear it. They were all happy, relieved even: the whole Roman populace walked around as if it’d been freed.

            Agatho and a few other lawyers wept, but honestly this time. The rest of the lawyers, pale and emaciated, scarcely even having breath, staggered out of the dark exactly as if they had just recently been brought back from the dead. One of them, when he saw Agatho’s bunch leaning on each other and weeping for their reverse of fortune, came and said to them, “I told you it won’t always be Saturnalia.”

            Narcissus, his freedman, had taken a shortcut to beat his employer to hell. Now, glowing from a bath, he went up to the new arrival and said, “What are gods doing among men?”

            “Look ali—sharp,” said Mercury, “Announce that we’re coming.”

            No sooner had the words left his mouth than Narcissus flew off.

            “Claudius,” he announced, “Is coming!”

            With applause they came out, singing, in Greek no less, “We have found him, let us rejoice!”

            Here were Silius, consul-elect, and Juncus the praetor, as well as Traulus, Helvius, Troga, Cotta, Vettius, and Fabius, all of them nobles Narcissus had had killed for Claudius. In the middle of the crowd of singers was Mnester the mime, mummed by Claudius out of a sense of decency. Rumor spread that Claudius had arrived and they came from all over: firstly his freedmen Polybius, Myron, Harpocras, Amphaeus, and Pheronactus (all of whom Claudius had “sent ahead” so he wouldn’t be left anywhere unaccompanied), then the prefects Catonius and Pollio, then his consul friends Lusius, Asinius, Lupus, and Pedo. Last were his niece, his other niece, and various in-laws, all his family that was in hell, actually. They swarmed Claudius like ants.

            “Everywhere is full of friends,” Claudius exclaimed (in Greek, of course) when he saw them all, “How did you all get here?”

            “I’m sorry, what did you say, Creul-ius?” Pedo asked, “Did you ask ‘how’? Who sent us here besides you, the killer of all his friends? Let’s go to court and I will show you the bench.”

            He led Claudius to the court of Aeacus, who presided over cases concerning the Cornelian Law, i.e., that pertaining to assassinations. Pedo requested that Claudius’ name be taken down and brought out his warrant: “Senators killed, 35; other nobility, 221; the rest, to quote the Iliad, ‘as many as both sand and dust.’”

            An advocate did not intervene until finally Petronius, an old, old friend of his and a man versed in the Claudian dialect, requested an adjournment.

            “Not granted.”

            Pedo prosecuted the case with loud flourishes and when the defense began to move to reply, Aeacus wouldn’t allow it. He kept a fair, dare I say the fairest, court and so, after hearing only one side of the case, he declared Claudius guilty, saying, in Greek of all things, “He’ll take exactly what he gave, as justice would want to come out symmetrical.”

            The method of his punishment, how he ought to suffer, had a longer debate. There were those that said that Sisyphus had already carried his burden, that Tantalus would die of thirst if he wasn’t relieved soon, or that poor Ixion’s wheel had to stop rolling at some point.

            It was deemed better though not to let any of these veterans off, otherwise Claudius might get release into his head. It should be a new penalty, devised to be a real motherfucker of a task for him to do with the appearance of some reward but always without satisfaction.

            Aeacus had it.

            “Effective immediately Claudius shall play dice in a sieve: when he goes to find them, they shall flee, and he shall make no progress.”

           And so, my friends, for that Caesar, the die was never truly cast.