31 - Prose satire

Summary

‘APOCOLOCYNTOSIS DIVI CLAUDII’

For sparkle and malicious wit few works of Latin literature can match the only complete Menippean satire which has survived, a skit upon the life and death of Claudius Caesar ascribed in manuscripts which transmit it to Seneca. It is commonly identified with a piece about Claudius which Cassius Dio tells us Seneca wrote under the title apocolocyntosis. This 'word, though hardly translatable, clearly involves allusion to a pumpkin, colocynta, perhaps as a symbol of stupidity, and may well involve, as Dio supposed, parody of the idea of deification. But how does it relate to the actual work, in which Claudius becomes neither a pumpkin nor a god? No one has yet explained. We have either to contend that the joke is limited to the title itself or, if we feel that a work and its title ought to have some discernible connexion, admit that a very real problem remains with us. As to authorship, Seneca could certainly have written the satire. There is nothing surprising in the contradiction here of all the earlier adulation of the Ad Polybium (even if that had been sincere, his protracted exile gave Seneca reason enough to detest Claudius) or in the satire's liveliness and scurrility (Seneca was versatile and not lacking in wit). Nero himself derided the dead Claudius and presumably allowed his courtiers to do the same. If Seneca wrote his skit shortly after Nero's accession he would have found an appreciative audience. But, though Seneca possessed the talent, motive, and opportunity to produce the work, so too did others, and famous names attract attributions. It is not absurd to retain some doubts.