Apocolocyntosis (15)

"For when he rattled with the box, and thought he now had got 'em,

The little cubes would 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;

p.407

And every time the tricksy things go slipping thro' his fingers.

Just so when Sisyphus his rock once gets atop the mountain,

To his dismay he sees it come down on his poor head bounding!"

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.