Mocking the (Disabled) Dead: Seneca’s Claudius in theApocolocyntosis

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper I attempt to explore Seneca’s open references and pointed allusions to Claudius’s physical and mental infirmities in his Apocolocyntosis Diui Claudii. Claudius—in full Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus—was a unique case. A man with severe disabilities and impairments since childbirth, he became emperor of Rome at the age of fifty on the death of his nephew, Caligula, thanks to an extraordinary stroke of luck. Therefore, he is a very promising case study as regards the attitudes of his contemporaries towards the disabled. In this famous satire on the apotheosis of Claudius, the late emperor becomes the target of scorn and laughter. Seneca exploits the comic potential of Claudius’s bodily malfunctions and turns his physical and mental disturbances into comic material. I discuss Seneca’s bitter ridicule of Claudius’s defects and peculiarities, focusing on issues such as laughter as a mechanism of the damnatio memoriae, laughter as revenge, laughter as political commentary, and laughter as the release of surplus negative emotions against Claudius. Comparative treatment of passages from other authors, such as Tacitus, Suetonius, and Cassius Dio, who also refer to Claudius’s impairments, will shed light on Seneca’s particular treatment of disability and disease.