There are actual tears of laughter in my eyes right now.
I'm reading I, Claudius by Robert Graves, and Claudius and this jerk Sejanus have just arranged for Claudius' 13-year-old son Drusillus to be betrothed to Sejanus' daughter. Without running this idea by Claudius' dear grandmama Livia first. I'm going to quote the passage describing how that turns out, because it's stunning and horrifying and mindblowingly awesome and I cannot stop laughing.
There was great alarm in the City when it was known that Sejanus was to become related with the Imperial family, but everyone hastened to congratulate him, and me too. A few days later Drusillus was dead. He was found lying behind a bush in the garden of a house at Pompeii where he had been invited, from Herculaneum, by some friends of Urgulanilla's. A small pear was found stuck in his throat. It was said at the inquest that he had been seen throwing fruit up in the air and trying to catch it in his mouth: his death was unquestionably due to an accident. But nobody believed this. It was clear that Livia, not having been consulted about the marriage of one of her own great-grandchildren, had arranged for the child to be strangled and the pear crammed down his throat afterwards. As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.
The last sentence is possibly the funniest thing I have read in all my years.
CONTROL FREAK MUCH THERE LIVIA
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