emperatriz, fingiendo entonces una gran sorpresa, declaró que ella había tenido el mismo sueño durante varias noches consecutivas. Poco después, se le anunció, tal como se había acordado, que Apio había llegado, pues en verdad había recibido órdenes el día anterior de presentarse a esa hora; y como si la veracidad del sueño quedara suficientemente confirmada con su aparición en ese momento, se ordenó de inmediato que fuera procesado y ejecutado. Al día siguiente, Claudio relató todo el asunto al senado y reconoció su gran agradecimiento hacia sus libertos por velar por él incluso mientras dormía.
XXXVIII. Sensible of his being subject to passion and resentment, he excused himself in both instances by a proclamation, assuring the public that “the former should be short and harmless, and the latter never without good cause.” After severely reprimanding the people of Ostia for not sending some boats to meet him upon his entering the mouth of the Tiber, in terms which might expose them to the public resentment, he wrote to Rome that he had been treated as a private person; yet immediately afterwards he pardoned them, and that in a way which had the appearance of making them (327) satisfaction, or begging pardon for some injury he had done them. Some people who addressed him unseasonably in public, he pushed away with his own hand. He likewise banished a person who had been secretary to a quaestor, and even a senator who had filled the office of praetor, without a hearing, and although they were innocent; the former only because he had treated him with rudeness while he was in a private station, and the other, because in his aedileship he had fined some tenants of his, for selling cooked victuals contrary to law, and ordered his steward, who interfered, to be whipped. On this account, likewise, he took from the aediles the jurisdiction they had over cooks’-shops.