Note 17 — Chapter XXXIII · THE IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS OF AUGUSTUS: TIBERIUS, CALIGULA, AND CLAUDIUS (continued 2)
Reading edition
Seneca, Apocol. 13. Claudius Cæsar venit … ἑυρήκαμεν, συγχαίρωμεν. Great has been the success of this remarkable passage, which may possibly have suggested the noble lines of Shakespeare (Rich. III. Act i. sc. 4):
“Clarence is come, false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury.”
It is more probable that Voltaire had it in his mind when he pronounced on the fate of Constantine and Clovis; and more than one stanza of Byron’s Vision of Judgment is evidently suggested by it.