vanish thro' the perforated bottom.
Then he would pick 'em up again, and once more set a-trying:
The dice but served him the same trick: away they went a-flying.
So still he tries, and still he fails; still searching long he lingers;
And every time the tricksy things go slipping thro' his fingers.
Just so when Sisyphus at last once gets there with his boulder,
He finds the labour all in vain--it rolls down off his shoulder."

All on a sudden who should turn up but Caligula, and claims the man for a slave: brings witnesses, who said they had seen him being flogged, caned, fisticuffed by him. He is handed over to Caligula, and Caligula makes him a present to Aeacus. Aeacus delivers him to his freedman Menander, to be his law-clerk.

FOOTNOTES

Footnote 1: A proverb for a nobody, as Petron, 58: qui te natum non putat.

Footnote 2: "Augurinus" unknown. Baba: see Sep. Ep. 159, a fool.

Footnote 3: Reference unknown.

Footnote 4: A Gallic slave, appointed by Augustus Procurator of Gallia Lugudunensis, when he made himself notorious by his extortions. See Dion Cass. liv, 21.

Footnote 5: A proverb, found also in Herondas iii, 76: apparently fairy-land, the land of Nowhere.

Footnote 6: Perhaps alluding to a mock marriage of Silius and Messalina.

Footnote 7: Again for as in ch. 6.

Footnote 8: Proverb: meaning unknown.

Footnote 9: Perhaps an allusion to the shortening of the consul's term, which was done to give more candidates a chance of the honour.

Footnote 10: Il., iii, 109; alluding here to Janus's double face.

Footnote 11: The speech seems to contain a parody of Augustus's style and sayings.

Footnote 12: M. Valerius Messala Corvinus, appointed præfectus urbi, resigned within a week.

Footnote 13: A proverb, like "Charity begins at home." The reading of the passage is uncertain; "sister" is only a conjecture, and it is hard to see why his sister should be mentioned.

Footnote 14: Some formula such as ais esse meum.

Footnote 15: Catullus iii, 12.

Footnote 16: Talthybius was a herald, and nuntius is obviously a gloss on this. He means Mercury.

Footnote 17: By the Cloaca?

Footnote 18: With a slight change, a cry used in the worship of Osiris.

Footnote 19: A proverbial line.