An extract from Claudius, the God

Sorry, I haven't been able to think/blog as much as I would like to. But I was re-reading certain parts of Claudius, the God ( a present from a friend :-) ) and thought it was pretty telling of how sharp witted Emperor Claudius was contrary to historian's belief that he was dull witted-

" Before I forget it, there is another story that I want to tell about a stolen gold cup...Once I [Claudius, the Roman Emperor], invited a number of provincial knights to supper - and would you believe it , one of the rogues, Marseilles man, went off with the gold cup that had been put before him. I didn't say word to him, but invited him to supper again the next day and this time gave him only a stone cup. This apparently frightened him, for the next morning the gold cup was returned with a fulsomely apologetic note explaining that he had taken the liberty of borrowing the cup for two days in order to get the engravings on it, which he much admired, copied by a goldsmith; he wished to perpetuate the memory of the enormous honour that I had done him, by drinking from a similarly chased gold cup every day for the rest of his life. In answer I sent him the stone cup asking, in exchange, for the reproduction of the gold one as a memento of the charming incident."