Suetonius wrote " ... for even if he was not the instigator of the emperor 's death , he was at least privy to it , as he openly admitted ; for he used afterwards to laud mushrooms , the vehicle in which the poison was administered to Claudius , as " the food of the gods , " as the Greek proverb has it . At any rate , after Claudius ' death he vented on him every kind of insult , in act and word , charging him now with folly and now with cruelty ; for it was a favourite joke of his to say that Claudius had ceased " to play the fool " among mortals , lengthening the first syllable of the word morari , and he disregarded many of his decrees and acts as the work of a madman and a dotard . Finally , he neglected to enclose the place where his body was burned except with a low and mean wall . "