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Claudius
10 BC - 54 AD
Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus - commonly called simple
Claudius - was Emperor of Rome from AD 41-54. At the time he
raised to the Imperial throne by the army after the fall of
Caligula, Claudius was considered by many to be somewhat
retarded because he had a pronounced stammer. This was far from
the case, however, and he soon flowered into one of the Empire's
greatest leaders, finishing the job of subjugating the people of
Britain which had been begun by Julius Caesar nearly a century
before. He led the invasion of these 'distant isles' in AD 43
and achieved the surrender of the city of Camulodunum
(Colchester) along with the submission of eleven British kings.
They were, no doubt, somewhat overawed by the show of elephants
which Claudius brought with him!
1.
Appius Claudius, Roman patrician leader of the decemvirs (decemviri,
commission of ten men) appointed in 451 BC to draw up a written
code of laws, the Twelve Tables, in response to the agitation of
the plebs. The traditions concerning these events are
inextricably confused. The decemvirs, when reappointed for a
second year, appear to have become oppressive, and Appius'
conduct towards Virginia provoked their overthrow in 449. Appius
was arrested but committed suicide before he was brought to
trial (Livy 3. 33). To later Romans he came to symbolize
aristocratic arrogance.
2. Appius Claudius Caecus (‘blind’), the famous Roman censor (in
312 BC), reputedly a proud and obstinate man with original and
broad views. He used his censorship to extend membership of the
senate to rich citizens of the lower classes, and even to the
sons of freedmen. Their support as well as heavier taxation
enabled him to build Rome's first aqueduct, Aqua Appia, and the
Via Appia. In his old age, when blind, he successfully attacked
the proposals of Pyrrhus for peace (279/8 BC), in a famous
speech still circulated in Cicero's day. He is the first Roman
prose-writer whose name is known to us. Cicero says that he was
a notable orator, and that some of his funeral orations were
still read. He composed aphorisms in Saturnian verse of which a
few have survived; they include ‘a man is the creator of his own
fortune’, faber est suae quisque fortunae.
3. Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus (10 BC–AD 54), son of the
elder Drusus and Antonia, daughter of Mark Antony, the Roman
emperor Claudius from 41 until his death. Hampered by some
physical disability and the general belief that he was mentally
deficient, he led a retired life and devoted himself to
scholarship, producing a history of the reign of Octavian and
another from the death of Julius Caesar, as well as histories of
Etruria and Carthage, and an autobiography. None of these works
has survived. When the emperor Gaius (Caligula) was murdered,
Claudius was the only surviving adult male of the Julio-Claudian
line, and was proclaimed emperor by the praetorian guard almost,
it seemed, by accident, after being discovered in hiding, and
against the wishes of the senate who wanted to restore the
republic. Claudius took part in the invasion of Britain in AD 43
and was present at the capture of Camulodunum (Colchester). In
48 he divorced his wife Messallina, by whom he had a daughter
Octavia and a son Britannicus, for her infidelity, and married
his niece Agrippina, whose son Nero he adopted. It was generally
believed that his death four years later was caused by a dish of
mushrooms poisoned by Agrippina. His subsequent deification was
the subject of a satire by Seneca (2), entitled Apocolocyntōsis.
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Introduction
Ti. Claudius Nero Germanicus (b. 10 BC, d. 54 A.D.; emperor,
41-54 A.D.) was the third emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
His reign represents a turning point in the history of the
Principate for a number of reasons, not the least for the manner
of his accession and the implications it carried for the nature
of the office. During his reign he promoted administrators who
did not belong to the senatorial or equestrian classes, and was
later vilified by authors who did. He followed Caesar in
carrying Roman arms across the English Channel into Britain but,
unlike his predecessor, he initiated the full-scale annexation
of Britain as a province, which remains today the most closely
studied corner of the Roman Empire. His relationships with his
wives and children provide detailed insights into the perennial
difficulties of the succession problem faced by all Roman
Emperors. His final settlement in this regard was not lucky: he
adopted his fourth wife's son, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, who was
to reign catastrophically as Nero and bring the dynasty to an
end. Claudius's reign, therefore, was a mixture of successes and
failures that leads into the last phase of the Julio-Claudian
line.
Early Life (10 BC - 41 A.D.)
Claudius was born on 1 August 10 BC at Lugdunum in Gaul, into
the heart of the Julio-Claudian dynasty: he was the son of
Drusus Claudius Nero, the son of Augustus's wife Livia, and
Antonia, the daughter of Mark Antony. His uncle, Tiberius, went
on to become emperor in AD 14 and his brother Germanicus was
marked out for succession to the purple when, in AD 4, he was
adopted by Tiberius. It might be expected that Claudius, as a
well-connected imperial prince, would have enjoyed the active
public life customary for young men of his standing but this was
not the case. In an age that despised weakness, Claudius was
unfortunate enough to have been born with defects. He limped, he
drooled, he stuttered and was constantly ill. His family members
mistook these physical debilities as reflective of mental
infirmity and generally kept him out of the public eye as an
embarrassment. A sign of this familial disdain is that he
remained under guardianship, like a woman, even after he had
reached the age of majority. Suetonius, in particular, preserves
comments of Antonia, his mother, and Livia, his grandmother,
which are particularly cruel in their assessment of the boy.
From the same source, however, it emerges that Augustus
suspected that there was more to this "idiot" than met the eye.
Nevertheless, Claudius spent his entire childhood and youth in
almost complete seclusion. The normal rites de passage of an
imperial prince came and went without official notice, and
Claudius received no summons to public office or orders to
command troops on the frontiers. When he assumed the toga
virilis, for instance, he was carried to the Capitol in a litter
at night; the normal procedure was to be led into the Forum by
one's father or guardian in full public view. How he spent the
voluminous free time of his youth is revealed by his later
character: he read voraciously. He became a scholar of
considerable ability and composed works on all subjects in the
liberal arts, especially history; he was the last person we know
of who could read Etruscan. These skills, and the knowledge of
governmental institutions he acquired from studying history,
were to stand him in good stead when he came to power.
It should not be forgotten that Claudius's wing of the family
suffered terribly in the internal struggles for succession that
racked the imperial house. His father died on campaign when
Claudius was only one year old, and his beloved brother,
Germanicus, succumbed under suspicious circumstances in AD 19.
His only other sibling to reach adulthood, Livilla, became
involved with Sejanus and paid the ultimate price in the wake of
the latter's fall from grace in AD 31. Through all this turmoil
Claudius survived, primarily through being ignored as an
embarrassment and an idiot.
Claudius's fortunes changed somewhat when his unstable nephew,
Gaius (Caligula), came to power in the spring of 37 A.D. Gaius,
it seems, liked to use his bookish, frail uncle as the butt of
cruel jokes and, in keeping with this pattern of behaviour,
promoted him to a suffect consulship on 1 July 37 A.D. At 46
years of age, it was Claudius's first public office. Despite
this sortie into public life, he seemed destined for a
relatively quiet and secluded dotage when, in January 41, events
overtook him.
Accession (24-25 January, 41 A.D.)
Arguably the most important period of Claudius's reign was its
first few hours. The events surrounding his accession are worthy
of detailed description, since they revealed much about the true
nature of the Augustan Principate.
In the early afternoon of 24 January 41 A.D., the emperor Gaius
was attending a display of dancers in a theatre near the palace.
Claudius was present. Shortly before lunch time, Claudius took
his leave and the emperor decided that he, too, would adjourn
for a bath. As Gaius was making his way down an isolated palace
corridor he was surrounded and cut down by discontented members
of his own bodyguard. In the aftermath of the assassination --
the first open murder of a Roman emperor -- there was widespread
panic and confusion. The German elements of the emperor's
bodyguard, who were fiercely loyal to their chief, went on the
rampage and killed indiscriminately. Soldiers of the larger
Praetorian Guard began looting the imperial palace. According to
the best-known tradition, some Guardsmen found Claudius cowering
behind a curtain and, on the spot, they declared him their
emperor and carried him off to their camp. In this story, a
hapless Claudius falls into power entirely as a result of
accident, and very much against his will. It is not hard to see
why, with its implicit theme of recusatio imperii, it is the
story of his accession that Claudius himself favoured. Vestiges,
however, can be traced of another tradition that paints a
somewhat different picture. In this version, the Guardsmen meet
in their camp and discuss the situation facing them in light of
Gaius's murder. Their pleasant, city-based terms of military
service were in jeopardy. They needed an emperor. Fixing their
intentions on Claudius as the only surviving mature member of
the Julio-Claudian house, they sent out a party of troops to
find him and bring him back to their camp so he could be
acclaimed emperor, which is what happened. In this story, the
elevation of Claudius to the purple was a purposeful plan on the
part of the soldiers, even if Claudius remains a passive and
reluctant partner in the whole process.
The possibility has to be entertained that Claudius was a far
more active participant in his own elevation than either of
these traditions let on. There is just reason to suspect that he
may even have been involved in planning the murder of Gaius --
his departure from the theatre minutes before the assassination
appears altogether too fortuitous. These possibilities, however,
must remain pure speculation, since the ancient evidence offers
nothing explicit in the way of support for them. On the other
hand, we can hardly expect them to, given the later pattern of
events. The whole issue of Claudius's possible involvement in
the death of Gaius and his own subsequent acclamation by the
Praetorian Guard must, therefore, remain moot.
Despite the circumstances that brought him there, the hours
following Claudius's arrival at the Praetorian Camp and his
acceptance as emperor by the Senate are vital ones for the
history of the Principate. Events could have taken a very
different course, but that they worked out as they did speaks
volumes as to how far seven decades of the Augustan Principate
had removed Rome from the possibility of a return to the
so-called free Republic.
News of Gaius's death prompted a meeting of the Senate.
Initially, there was talk of declaring the Republic restored and
dispensing with emperors altogether. Then, however, various
senators began proposing that they be chosen as the next
princeps. Debate was in progress when news reached the senators
that the Guard had made the decision for them: Claudius, the
soldiers' choice, was sitting in the Praetorian Camp. The main
historical difficulty in what happened next is due to confusion
in Josephus's account (which is the fullest). In one version,
the Senate sent two tribunes to the Camp to demand that Claudius
step down. Once in the Camp, however, the tribunes were cowed by
the ardent support for Claudius among the soldiers and instead
requested that he come to the Senate to be ratified as emperor.
In Josephus's alternate version, however, Herod Agrippa is
summoned by the senators and employed as an envoy between the
Camp and the Senate. Clearly, Josephus is conveying two
traditions about these events, one Roman (featuring the
tribunes), the other Jewish (highlighting the role of Herod
Agrippa). Suetonius, naturally enough, follows the Roman
tradition, as does Dio in his main account; interestingly, the
latter shows awareness of some participation on the part of
Herod Agrippa in a later passage.
Regardless of how the negotiations were conducted, the Senate
quickly realized it was powerless in the presence of several
thousand armed men supporting Claudius's candidacy. The
impotence that the esteemed council had experienced time and
again when dealing with the military dynasts of the Late
Republic was once more revealed to all, and the meeting
dissolved with the fate of the Empire left undecided. When the
Senate met again later that night in the Temple of Jupiter
Victor, it found its numbers much depleted, since many had fled
the city to their country estates. The senators assessed their
military strength: they had three or four urban cohorts under
the command of the City Prefect, numbering perhaps 3,000 men.
With these, they occupied the Forum and Palatine. Plans were
laid to arm some ex-slaves to provide reinforcements. By these
actions the senators were accepting that supreme power in
post-Augustan Rome could be achieved only by military force; all
questions of legal niceties were irrelevant. But the Senate
could not control their troops -- they all deserted to the
Praetorian Guard, with whom they shared the Camp.
Now completely powerless, the senators hurried off to the
Praetorian Camp to pay their respects to Claudius. On 25 January
41 A.D. Claudius was formally invested with all the powers of
the princeps, becoming Ti. Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.
(Since Claudius had no legal claim to it whatsoever, the
appearance of "Caesar" in his imperial name marks the first step
in this word's transmutation from a family name to a title
denoting ruler, and so begins a tradition that stretches into
the modern era with "Kaiser," "Czar," and possibly "Shah.")
These events have been treated in some detail because of their
immense historical importance. Gaius was the first emperor of
Rome to be openly murdered, and Claudius's accession marks the
first overt and large-scale intrusion of the military into
post-Augustan politics. The basic fact of the Principate, which
had always been implicit in the Augustan settlement but
heretofore carefully disguised, was now made plain: the
emperor's position ultimately rested not on consensus but on the
swords of the soldiers who paid him homage. From one
perspective, the Principate had been revealed for what it truly
was -- an exercise in managing the military's loyalties, and not
a form of government rooted in law and consensus. The Senate, in
attempting to block Claudius with troops of their own, had
acquiesced in this structure of power. For ever afterward,
emperors sat on the throne on the sufferance of the troops they
commanded, and a loss of army loyalty necessarily entailed a
loss of power, usually accompanied by the loss of the
incumbent's life. But the harder lessons in these realities lay
in the future; for the moment order had been restored, and
Claudius embarked on his reign in relative security.
The Early Years: Britain, Freedmen, and Messalina (AD 41 -
48)
Among Claudius's first acts was the apprehension and execution
of Gaius's assassins. Whatever his opinion of their actions,
politics and pietas required that Claudius not be seen to
condone men who murdered an emperor and a member of his own
family. He also displayed immediate understanding of the
centrality of the military to his position and sought to create
a military image for himself that his prior sheltered existence
had denied him. Preparations got under way soon after his
accession for a major military expedition into Britain, perhaps
sparked by an attempted revolt of the governor of Dalmatia, L.
Arruntius Camillus Scribonianus, in 42 A.D.. The invasion
itself, spearheaded by four legions, commenced in the summer of
43 and was to last for decades, ultimately falling short of the
annexation of the whole island (if indeed that was Claudius's
final objective at the outset). This move marked the first major
addition to the territory of the Roman empire since the reign of
Augustus. Claudius himself took part in the campaign, arriving
in the war zone with an entourage of ex-consuls in the late
summer of 43 A.D. After a parade at Camulodunum (Colchester) to
impress the natives, he returned to Rome to celebrate a triumph
in 44 A.D. His military credentials had been firmly established.
The sources are united in portraying Claudius as a dupe to his
imperial freedmen advisors as well as to his wives. It is
possible that the hostile stance of the elite toward Claudius
extended back into his reign -- he was, after all, a usurper who
had been foisted on the aristocrats by the soldiers. If so,
Claudius's reliance on his freedmen may have stemmed from this
circumstance, in that the ex-slaves were (as far as he was
concerned) more trustworthy than the sullen aristocracy. For
whatever reasons, there is no doubt that Claudius's reign is the
first era of the great imperial freedman. To be sure, the
secretariat had existed before Claudius and members of it had
achieved some prominence (notably Helicon and Callistus under
Gaius), but the rise of powerful individuals like Narcissus,
Polybius, and Pallas was a distinctive mark of Claudius's reign.
The power of these men was demonstrated early on when the
emperor chose Narcissus as his envoy to the legions as they
hesitated to embark on their invasion of Britain. According to
our sources, the freedmen were frequently to exert less
beneficent influences throughout Claudius's reign.
In 38 A.D. Claudius had married Valeria Messalina, a scion of a
noble house with impressive familial connections. Messalina bore
him a daughter (Octavia, born in 39) and a son (Britannicus,
born in 41): she was therefore the mother of the heir-apparent
and enjoyed influence for that reason. In the sources, Messalina
is portrayed as little more than a pouting adolescent
nymphomaniac who holds wild parties and arranges the deaths of
former lovers or those who scorn her advances; and all this
while her cuckolded husband blunders on in blissful ignorance.
Recently, attempts have been made to rehabilitate Messalina as
an astute player of court politics who used sex as a weapon, but
in the end we have little way of knowing the truth. What we can
say is that either her love of parties (on the adolescent model)
or her byzantine scheming (on the able courtier model) brought
her down. While Claudius was away in Ostia in AD 48, Messalina
had a party in the palace in the course of which a marriage
ceremony was performed (or playacted) between herself and a
consul-designate, C. Silius. Whatever the intentions behind it,
the political ramifications of this folly were sufficiently
grave to cause the summary execution of Messalina, Silius, and
assorted hangers-on (orchestrated, tellingly, by the freedman
Narcissus). Claudius was now without a wife.
The Rise of Agrippina and Claudius's Death (48-54 A.D.)
In our sources, the death of Messalina is presented as
initiating a scramble among the freedmen, each wishing to place
his preferred candidate at Claudius's side as the new empress.
In the end, it was Pallas who prevailed when he convinced
Claudius to marry Agrippina the Younger. The marriage took place
within months of Messalina's execution. Agrippina was a colorful
figure with extensive and far-reaching imperial connections: she
was the daughter of Claudius's brother, Germanicus, and a sister
of Gaius Caligula, by whom she had been exiled for involvement
in the conspiracy of Gaetulicus; moreover, she had been married
before. She therefore brought to the marriage with Claudius --
which necessitated a change in the law to allow uncles to marry
their brothers' daughters -- a son, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus.
Agrippina's ambitions for this son proved the undoing of
Claudius.
The years between his marriage to Agrippina in 48 and his death
in 54 were difficult ones for Claudius. Whether or not sources
are right to portray him as a dupe of his wives and freedmen
throughout his reign, there can be little doubt that Agrippina's
powerful personality dominated Claudius's last years. Her
position, openly influential in a manner unlike any previous
empress, was recognized by those attuned to imperial politics,
and she appears more and more prominently in official
inscriptions and coins. In 50 the Senate voted her the title
"Augusta," the first prominent imperial woman to hold this title
since Livia -- and the latter had only held it after Augustus's
death. She greeted foreign embassies to the emperor at Rome from
her own tribunal, and those greetings were recorded in official
documents; she also wore a gold-embroidered military cloak at
official functions. It is a sign of her overt influence that a
new colony on the Rhine bore her name. Agrippina's powerful
position facilitated the advancement of her son Domitius and
was, in turn, strengthened by it. Claudius already had a natural
son, Britannicus, who was still a minor. Domitius, at 13, was
three years older. Now Claudius began to advance Domitius
through various signs of favor, the most important being his
adoption as Claudius's son on 25 February AD 50. Henceforth
Domitius was known as Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus Caesar and
known to posterity simply as "Nero". But Claudius openly
advanced Nero in other ways, too: the emperor held the
consulship in 51, which was the year Nero took the "toga of
manhood," and that event was itself staged several months before
the customary age for Roman teenagers; Nero was granted imperium
proconsulare outside the city, addressed the Senate, appeared
with Claudius at circus games (while Britannicus appeared still
in the toga of a minor), and was hailed as "Leader of the Youth"
(princeps iuventutis) on the coinage; in AD 53 Nero married
Claudius's daughter, Octavia. All of these are sure signs of
preference in the ever-unstable imperial succession schemes. The
main difficulty for modern scholars lies in how to explain
Claudius's favouring of Nero over his natural son, Britannicus;
the reasons remain a matter of intense debate.
No matter what the reasons were, there can be little doubt that
Nero, despite his tender age, had been clearly marked out as
Claudius's successor. Agrippina, according to Tacitus, now
decided it was time to dispose of Claudius to allow Nero to take
over. The ancient accounts are confused -- as is habitual in the
cases of hidden and dubious deaths of emperors -- but their
general drift is that Claudius was poisoned with a treated
mushroom, that he lingered a while and had to be poisoned a
second time before dying on 13 October 54 A.D. At noon that same
day, the sixteen-year-old Nero was acclaimed emperor in a
carefully orchestrated piece of political theater. Already
familiar to the army and the public, he faced no serious
challenges to his authority.
Claudius and the Empire
The invasion and annexation of Britain was by far the most
important and significant event in Claudius's reign. But several
other issues deserve attention: his relationship with and
treatment of the aristocracy, his management of the provinces
and their inhabitants, and his judicial practices, and his
building activities. Before looking at these subjects, however,
we should note that the long-lived notion that Claudius
initiated a coherent policy of centralization in the Roman
Empire -- evidenced in the centralization of provincial
administration and judicial actions, in the creation of a
departmental bureaucracy, his interference in financial affairs,
and so on -- has been decisively disproven by a recent biography
of Claudius. Whatever actions Claudius took in regard to the
various wings of government, he did so without any unifying
policy of centralization in mind.
Claudius's relationship with the Senate did not get off to a
good start -- given the nature of his succession and the early
revolt of Scribonianus with its ensuing show trials -- and it
seems likely that distrust of the aristocracy is what impelled
Claudius to elevate the role of his freedmen. During his reign,
however, Claudius made efforts to conciliate Rome's leading
council, but he also embarked on practices that redounded to his
detriment, especially those of sponsoring the entrance men
considered unworthy into the Order and hearing delicate cases
behind closed doors (in camera). In the last analysis, the
figures speak for themselves: 35 senators and several hundred
Knights were driven to suicide or executed during the reign. The
posthumous vilification of Claudius in the aristocratic
tradition also bespeaks a deep bitterness and indicates that,
ultimately, Claudius's relationship with the Senate showed
little improvement over time. His reviving and holding the
censorship in 47-48 is typical of the way the relationship
between Senate and emperor misfired: Claudius, no doubt, thought
he was adhering to ancient tradition, but the emperor-censor
only succeeded in eliciting odium from those he was assessing.
Claudius was remembered (negatively) by tradition as being
noticeably profligate in dispensing grants of Roman citizenship
to provincials; he also admitted "long-haired" Gauls into the
senatorial order, to the displeasure of the snobbish incumbents.
Both of these practices demonstrate his concern for fair play
and good government for the provinces, despite his largely
sedentary reign: under Claudius are attributed the first issues
of standing orders (mandata) from emperor to governor. In the
organization of the provinces, Claudius appears to have
preferred direct administration over client kingship. Under him
the kingdoms of Mauretania, Lycia, Noricum, and Thrace were
converted into provinces. Stable kingdoms, such as Bosporus and
Cilicia, were left untouched. A good example of the pattern is
Herod Agrippa I. This client prince had grown up at Rome and had
been awarded tetrarchic lands in Galilee by Gaius (Caligula). As
we saw above, he had been involved in the accession of Claudius
and, as a reward for services rendered, he was granted Judaea
and Samaria in addition to his former holdings. He fell from
grace, however, when he suspiciously extended Jerusalem's walls
and invited other eastern kings to a conference at Tiberias. He
died suddenly in 44 A.D., after which his former kingdom again
came under direct Roman rule.
One feature of Claudius's reign that the sources particularly
criticize is his handling of judicial matters. While he was
certainly diligent in attending to hearings and court
proceedings -- he was constantly present in court and heard
cases even during family celebrations and festal days -- the
sources accuse him of interfering unduly with cases, of not
listening to both sides of a case, of making ridiculous and/or
savage rulings, and of hearing delicate cases in closed-door
private sessions with only his advisors present. The most
celebrated and infamous of the latter cases is that of Valerius
Asiaticus, the Gallic ex-consul and one-time friend of Claudius,
who fell from grace in 47, reputedly at Messalina's instigation.
His case was heard in the emperor's bedroom and Asiaticus was
forced to suicide. Even if a survey of surviving rulings by
Claudius do not show him making silly decisions, his judicial
practices caught such attention that Seneca's Apocolocyntosis
ends with a courtroom scene with Claudius as the accused: he is
not allowed to make his defence, is convicted, and condemned to
be a powerless courtroom clerk. Such an image must have been
most pleasing to the senatorial imagination.
Finally, there is Claudius's building activities. Public
building was de rigueur for Roman emperors, and ancient accounts
of individual reigns routinely include mention of imperial
munificence. Matters hydraulic account for Claudius's greatest
constructional achievements, in the form of a new aqueduct for
the city of Rome, a new port at Portus near Ostia, and the
draining of the Fucine Lake. The sources are at pains to
highlight the almost catastrophic outcome of the latter project,
but its scale cannot be denied. Suetonius's assessment that "his
public works were grandiose and necessary rather than numerous"
is entirely correct.
Conclusion
Robert Graves' fictional characterization of Claudius as an
essentially benign man with a keen intelligence has tended to
dominate the wider public's view of this emperor. Close study of
the sources, however, reveals a somewhat different kind of man.
In addition to his scholarly and cautious nature, he had a cruel
streak, as suggested by his addiction to gladiatorial games and
his fondness for watching his defeated opponents executed. He
conducted closed-door (in camera ) trials of leading citizens
that frequently resulted in their ruin or deaths -- an
unprecedented and tyrannical pattern of behaviour. He had his
wife Messalina executed, and he personally presided over a
kangaroo court in the Praetorian Camp in which many of her
hangers-on lost their lives. He abandoned his own son
Britannicus to his fate and favoured the advancement of Nero as
his successor. While he cannot be blamed for the disastrous way
Nero's rule turned out, he must take some responsibility for
putting that most unsuitable youth on the throne. At the same
time, his reign was marked by some notable successes: the
invasion of Britain, stability and good government in the
provinces, and successful management of client kingdoms.
Claudius, then, is a more enigmatic figure than the other Julio-Claudian
emperors: at once careful, intelligent, aware and respectful of
tradition, but given to bouts of rage and cruelty, willing to
sacrifice precedent to expediency, and utterly ruthless in his
treatment of those who crossed him. Augustus's suspicion that
there was more to the timid Claudius than met the eye was more
than fully borne out by the events of his unexpected reign.
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