away.
They praise their brother's melodies, and still the spindles run,
Till more than man's allotted span the busy hands have spun.
Then Phoebus says, "O sister Fates! I pray take none away,
But suffer this one life to be longer than mortal day.
Like me in face and lovely grace, like me in voice and song,
He'll bid the laws at length speak out that have been dumb so long,
Will give unto the weary world years prosperous and bright.
Like as the daystar from on high scatters the stars of night,
As, when the stars return again, clear Hesper brings his light,
Or as the ruddy dawn drives out the dark, and brings the day,
As the bright sun looks on the world, and speeds along its way
His rising car from morning's gates: so Caesar doth arise,
So Nero shows his face to Rome before the people's eyes,
His bright and shining countenance illumines all the air,
While down upon his graceful neck fall rippling waves of hair."
Thus Apollo. But Lachesis, quite as ready to cast a
favourable eye on a handsome man, spins away by the
handful, and bestows years and years upon Nero out
of her own pocket. As for Claudius, they tell everybody
          to speed him on his way
    With cries of joy and solemn litany.

At once he bubbled up the ghost, and there was an end to that shadow of a life. He was listening to a troupe of comedians when he died, so you see I have reason to fear those gentry. The last words he was heard to speak in this world were these. When he had made a great noise with that end of him which talked easiest, he cried out, "Oh dear, oh dear! I think I have made a mess of myself." Whether he did or no, I cannot say, but certain it is he always did make a mess of everything.

What happened next on earth it is mere waste of time to tell, for you know it all well enough, and there is no fear of your ever forgetting the impression which that public rejoicing made on your memory. No one forgets his own happiness. What happened in heaven you shall hear: for proof please apply to my informant. Word comes to Jupiter that a stranger had arrived, a man well set up, pretty grey; he seemed to be threatening something, for he wagged his head ceaselessly; he dragged the right foot. They asked him what nation he was of; he answered something in a confused mumbling voice: his language they did not understand. He was no Greek and no Roman, nor of any known race. On this Jupiter bids Hercules go and find out what country he comes from; you see Hercules had travelled over the whole world, and might be expected to know all the nations in it. But Hercules, the first glimpse he got, was really much taken aback, although not all the monsters in the world could frighten him; when he saw this new kind of object, with its extraordinary gait, and the voice of no terrestrial beast, but such as you might hear in the leviathans of the deep, hoarse and inarticulate, he thought his thirteenth labour had come upon him. When he looked closer, the thing seemed to be a kind of man. Up he goes, then, and says what your Greek finds readiest to his tongue:

Claudius was delighted to find literary men up there, and began to hope there might be some corner for his own historical works. So he caps him with another Homeric verse, explaining that he was Caesar:

But the next verse was more true, and no less Homeric:

He would have taken in poor simple Hercules, but that Our Lady of Malaria was there, who left her temple and came alone with him: all the other gods he had left at Rome. Quoth she, "The fellow's tale is nothing