I didn't intend to quote I, Claudius more than I have, but this paragraph which I have just read in chapter 28 recounting the sudden death of Tiberius Caesar's trusted go-to prophetic fortune-teller dude Thrasyllus is, like, a thing of beauty.
Thrasyllus died. His death was announced by a lizard. It was a very small lizard and ran across the stone table where Thrasyllus was at breakfast with Tiberius in the sun and straddled across his forefinger. Thrasyllus asked, "You have come to summon me, brother? I expected you at this very hour." Then turning to Tiberius he said: "My life is at an end, Caesar, so farewell! I never told you a lie. You told me many. But beware when your lizard gives you a warning." He closed his eyes and a few moments later was dead.
SO. RAD.
Seriously, can you - I don't even - how is - just imagine looking death in its tiny lizard face and being like "whatevs". He is SO CHILL.
Part of its greatness comes from its context; it takes place after a long, depressing chunk of story in which all the good people are dying horribly and Tiberius is fuckin' the whole Roman Empire over and betraying people and "legally" taking people's estates for himself and being greedy and sexually depraved and his bestie Nerva has just starved to death for some reason (note that Nerva was the third person to starve to death in the space of the first half of that chapter) and everything is falling to pieces. And then out of the blue Thrasyllus, an awesome but unimportant dude, is sittin' eating his breakfast and a lizard comes and climbs onto his finger and is like "sup" and Thrasyllus is like "sup" and then says a couple cryptic things to Tiberius and closes his eyes and dies. Like a boss.
And then I'm like "....do that again."
Trying so hard to imagine Tiberius' face while that goes down right now.
Trying so, so hard.
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