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Introduction Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus (b. 10 BC, d. 54 A. D. ; emperor, 41 - 54 A. D. ) was the third emperor of the Julio-Claudius 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, 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-Claudius 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-Claudius dynasty: he was the son of Drugs 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 tasks 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 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 known 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. His father died on campaign when Claudius was only one year old, and his brother, Germanicus, succumbed under suspicious circumstances in AD 19. His only other sibling to reach adulthood, Livia, became involved with Sejanus and fell 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 behavior, promoted him to a 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.
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 required that Claudius not be seen to condone men who murdered an emperor and a member of his own family. [[ 15 ]] 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. Apparently the freedmen were frequently to exert less beneficent influences throughout Claudius's reign. In 38 A. D. Claudius had married Valeria Messalina, a blossom of a noble house with impressive family connections.
Messalina bore him a daughter (Octavia, born in 39) and a son (Britannic us, born in 41): she was therefore the mother of the heir-apparent and enjoyed influence for that reason. 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. What we can say is that either her love of parties (on the adolescent model) or her 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 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. ) 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 Pal...
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