If, as was his usual custom, he dropped asleep, after a meal, he was pelted with olives and date-stones, or rough stockings were drawn over his hands that he might be seen rubbing his face with them when he was suddenly awaked.
[Footnote 26: He calls him [Greek meteoros] which implies awkwardness and constant absence of mind.] This was the unhappy being who was now summoned to support the falling weight of empire.

While rummaging the palace for plunder, a common soldier had spied a pair of feet protruding from under the curtains which shaded the sides of an upper corridor.

Seizing these feet, and inquiring who owned them, he dragged out an uncouth, panic-stricken mortal, who immediately prostrated himself at his knees and begged hard for mercy.

It was Claudius, who scared out of his wits by the tragedy which he had just beheld, had thus tried to conceal himself until the storm was passed.

"Why, this is Germanicus!" [27] exclaimed the soldier, "let's make him emperor." Half joking and half in earnest, they hoisted him on their shoulders--for terror had deprived him of the use of his legs--and hurried him off to the camp of the Praetorians.