Claudius The God: And His Wife Messalina

by Robert Graves

Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.’

The tests put upon candidates for the priesthood are immensely severe. For example, there is a test of poetical composition. The candidate must lie naked all night in a coffin-like box, only his nostrils protruding above the icy water with which it is filled, and with heavy stones laid on his chest. In this position he must compose a poem of considerable length in the most difficult of the many difficult bardic metres, on a subject which is given him as he is placed in the box. On his emergence next morning he must be able to chant this poem to a melody which he has been simultaneously composing, and accompany himself on the harp.

The British infantry are armed with broadswords and small leather bucklers. Man for man, they are the equals and even the superiors of the Romans, but their fighting value decreases with their numbers, as ours increases.

“The trouble is that though sensible men may ‘laugh to view the sight’ of a brightly-painted fish-tailed woman, the mob are just as likely as not to gape at her, see her as a sea-goddess, and worship her.”

For according to the ethics of this sorry sect the greater the original crime, the greater the forgiveness!

I cannot deprecate too strongly the wilful assumption by a mortal of divine power; but if he can indeed persuade men to worship him and they worship him genuinely, and there are no portents or other signs of heavenly displeasure at his deification—well, then he is a god, and he must be accepted as such.