Apocolocyntosis | Page 8

agreed that
some new punishment must be devised: they must devise some new task,
something senseless, to suggest some craving without result. Then Aeacus
decreed he should rattle dice for ever in a box with no bottom. At once the
poor wretch began his fruitless task of hunting for the dice, which for
ever slipped from his fingers.

"For when he rattled with the box, and thought he now had got 'em. 15
The little cubes would vanish thro' the perforated bottom.
Then he would pick 'em up again, and once more set a-trying:
The dice but served him the same trick: away they went a-flying.
So still he tries, and still he fails; still searching long he lingers;
And every time the tricksy things go slipping thro' his fingers.
Just so when Sisyphus at last once gets there with his boulder,
He finds the labour all in vain--it rolls down off his shoulder."

All on a sudden who should turn up but Caligula, and claims the man for a
slave: brings witnesses, who said they had seen him being flogged, caned,
fisticuffed by him. He is handed over to Caligula, and Caligula makes him
a present to Aeacus. Aeacus delivers him to his freedman Menander, to be
his law-clerk.