If any of my readers are still out there, I have decided to resume my posting. The election is over, so I will not get nasty comments when I make jokes and seem not to take seriously the imminent end of of the Republic and the collapse of the ecosystem and the horror of WAR! PESTILENCE! FAMINE, WILD HEDGEHOGS! STUDENTS, SMOG!

This blog serves as a notebook in case I get around to writing articles or even, heaven forfend, another book. Of the making of books there is no end, especially now that it is so easy to self-publish.

I also have the stimulation of talks with our learned office manager at Mount Calvary, Mr. John Devine, who varies his duties of paying the bills and removing dead rats from the church sidewalk by encouraging me to fill in the gaps in my reading.

Recently he reminded me of the existence of the Menippean satire, possibly by Seneca, Apocolocyntosis Claudii, or the Pumpkinification of Claudius. The work is in Latin, but the title, in Greek, has several meanings. It alludes to the apotheosis that emperors regularly underwent (like the canonization of recent popes, which seems to be their final promotion). But the title also refers to pumpkins or gourds, and to the colon and things that come out of it (genteel enough?). Claudius was supposedly poisoned which resulted in explosive diarrhea, an incident referred to in the text.

After his death, Claudius (this is the Claudius of I, Claudius) ascends to Olympus and expects to become a god. However, Augustus, who has kept his mouth shut since his own apotheosis, protests because of the numerous murders Claudius has ordered. Scholars say that Augustus in the text gives a good imitation of the real Augustus’s pompous style.

So off Claudius goes to Hades. There the infernal gods debate whether he should take over Ixion’s wheel or Tantalus’s place (who is getting mighty thirsty), but instead sentence Claudius to forever play dice (one of his many vices) with a cup without a bottom which is forever dropping the dice in the grass.

There are many officials in both church and state who could be immortalized in such a literary work. Marciel Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ, was, among more serious vices, a drug addict and incestuous pedophile. He fully expected his followers to engineer his canonization – money talks in the Vatican, as elsewhere.

 

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