<TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0" xmlns:py="http://codespeak.net/lxml/objectify/pytype" py:pytype="TREE"><text><body><div n="urn:cts:latinLit:phi1017.phi011.perseus-eng2" type="edition" xml:lang="eng"><div n="5" type="textpart" subtype="card"><p>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 of
                fair height and hair well sprinkled with 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:<quote rend="blockquote"><quote>Who art thou, and what thy people? Who thy<note place="marg">Od. i, 17</note> parents,
                        where thy home?</quote></quote></p><pb n="p.383"/><p>Claudius was delighted to find literary men in that place, 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:<quote rend="blockquote"><quote>Breezes wafted me from Ilion unto the Ciconian<note place="marg">od. ix, 39</note>
                        land.</quote></quote></p><p>But the next verse was more true, and no less Homeric:<quote rend="blockquote"><quote>Thither come, I sacked a city, slew the people every one.</quote></quote></p></div></div></body></text></TEI>