‘“Towards the end of his life he had shown some plain signs of re- 
pentance for his marriage with Agrippina and his adoption of Nero. 
For, when his freedmen expressed their approval of a trial in which 
he had the day before condemned a woman for adultery, he declared 
that it had been his destiny also to have wives who were all unchaste, 
but not unchastened.’’ (Suetonius, J. Gavorse ed., p. 236) 
As these two passages reveal, the emperor considered 
himself a deceived husband and talked about his wives’ 
adulteries to the praetorians and his freedmen. Behind 
his back, however, the Emperor’s cuckoldship may have 
been the object of general mockery, and it is therefore 
not astonishing that in the text of the Apocolocyntosis 
we find an allusion to this circumstance: 
‘quid in cubiculo suo faciant, nescit, et iam ‘caeli scrutatur plagas’?’’ 
(VIII, 3) 
eé . . a ‘ 
He doesn’t know what goes on in his own chamber, and now he 
searches the regions of heaven’.’’ (A. P. Ball ed., p. 142, 8) 
Therefore, we hold that the -colocynt- in A pocolocyn- 
tosis signifies “cucurbita’ not, however, in the sense of a 
botanical species, but in the figurative sense of ‘fool’ or 
‘madman’ and possibly in a limited figurative sense of 
‘cuckold’. 
One may ask now what explanation we have to give 
for the diarrhoea from which the dying emperor is said to 
have suffered. The only evidence for this diarrhoea is 
the already quoted sentence from the Apocolocyntosis 
(IV, 3): ‘‘Vae me, puto concacavi me’’. It would be 
reckless to rank this polemic satire among the texts of 
serious historians. The author of this text was not in- 
terested in making true statements, but rather in mock- 
ing the Kmperor Claudius as effectively as possible. 
Anyone doubting this should have a look at the next 
sentence. It reads as follows: 
**quod an fecerit, nescio: omnia certe concacavit.’’ (Ibid. ) 
‘‘T do not know whether he really did this: he certainly fouled 
everything.’’ (Transl. by Deltgen/Kauer) 
[ 239 ] 
