This speech was greeted with resounding applause and Tiberius triumphantly asked whether Gallus had

This speech was greeted with resounding applause and Tiberius triumphantly asked whether Gallus had any further remarks to make. Gallus said that he had. He recalled, he said, another early tradition about the sudden death and disappearance of Romulus, which appeared in the works of even the gravest historians as an alternative to the one quoted by his honourable and veracious friend Atticus: namely, that Romulus was so hated for his tyranny over a free people that one day, taking advantage of a sudden fog, the Senate murdered him, cut him up and carried the pieces away under their robes.
"But what about Hercules?" someone hurriedly asked.
Gallus said: "Tiberius himself in his eloquent oration at the funeral repudiated the comparison between Augustus and Hercules, His words were: 'Hercules in his childhood dealt only with serpents, and even when a man only with a stag or two, and a wild boar which he killed,fake uggs, and a lion,fake uggs for sale; and even this he did reluctantly and at somebody's command; whereas Augustus fought not with beasts but with men and of his own free-will'-and so forth and so forth. But my reason for repudiating the comparison lies in the circumstances of Hercules's death." Then he sat down. The reference was perfectly clear to anybody who considered the matter; for the legend was that Hercules died of poison administered by his wife,Moncler outlet online store.
But the motion for Augustus's deification was carried. Shrines were built to him in Rome and the neighbouring cities. An order of priests was formed for administering his rites and Livia, who had at the same time been granted the titles of Julia and Augusta,Replica Designer Handbags, was made his High Priestess. Atticus was rewarded by Livia with a gift of ten thousand gold pieces, and was appointed one of the new priests of Augustus, being even excused the heavy initiation fee. I was also appointed a priest, but had to pay a higher initiation fee than anyone, because I was Livia's grandson. Nobody dared ask why this vision of Augustus's ascent had only been seen by Atticus. And the joke was that on the night before the funeral Livia had concealed an eagle in a cage at the top of the pyre, which was to be opened as soon as the pyre was lit by someone secretly pulling a string from below. The eagle would then fly up and was intended to be taken for Augustus's spirit. Unfortunately the miracle had not come off. The cage door refused to open. Instead of saying nothing and letting the eagle burn, the officer who was in charge clambered up the pyre and opened the cage door with his hands. Livia had to say that the eagle had been thus released at her orders, as a symbolic act.
I will not write more about Augustus's funeral, though a more magnificent one has never been seen at Rome, for I must now begin to omit all things in my story except those of the first importance: I have already filled more than thirteen rolls of the best paper-from the new paper-making factory I have recently equipped-and not reached a third of the way through it. But I must not fail to tell about the contents of Augustus's will, the reading of which was awaited with general interest and impatience. Nobody was more anxious to know what it contained than I was, and I shall explain why.