Un gioco di parole nell'Apocolocyntosis

In the use of participle morantibus in apoc. 9, 1 can be detected a translinguistic wordplay between the Latin verb mǒror and the Greek adjective μωρός, which targets the proverbial stupidity of Claudius and draws on a similar wordplay coined, according to Suetonius, by the new princeps Nero. Another allusion to the same wordplay is probably present also in the neologism fatuari (from fatuus, the Latin word corresponding to μωρός) in apoc. 7, 1. All that can confirm the hypothesis that Seneca’s Apococolocyntosis was primarily composed for the amusement of Nero’s court (perhaps on occasion of the Saturnalia), at the expense of the recently dead emperor Claudius.