THE AUGUSTEAN EMPIRE (44 B.C.—A.D. 70)

CHAPTER XX.

GAIUS AND CLAUDIUS

I. GAIUS

SCARCELY was Tiberius dead before Macro was on his way to Rome to make the path smooth for Gaius’ accession, for Gaius was as yet only privates and in Tiberius’ will he and his cousin Gemellus had been nominated as co-heirs; but there was no one to uphold the rights of the eighteen-year-old boy against a son of the popular Germanicus. The Senate readily agreed to set aside the will of Tiberius on the ground that he was insane and on 18 March 37 Gaius became princeps with the usual titles, and began his first day of tribunician power. Ten days later he entered Rome and on the 29th soldiers bore the body of Tiberius into the city: Gaius asked for divine honours for Tiberius, but the Senate could not bring itself to grant this, and the matter was simply allowed to drop; a public funeral was, however, given to the body on the 3rd of April, and with that all traces of the old reign of gloom and anxiety were swept away. Everywhere relief and joy were expressed in almost delirious terms. As Gaius passed on his way to Rome the populace flocked out to bless him and call him its darling, but the provinces were not a whit behind: “on all sides”, says Philo, “you could see nothing but altars and sacrifices, men and women decked in their holiday best and smiling”, while Eastern cities greeted the long-hoped-for accession of the new sun-god, Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.

Yet a moment’s reflection upon the young man’s descent and upbringing might have given them pause. Through his mother Agrippina he traced back descent to Julia, on his father’s side to Antony, and in his descendants Antony took revenge for Actium. He had been born on the 31st of August AD 12, brought up in the Rhine camps, and after his father’s triumph in AD 17 accompanied him to the East: then came the death of Germanicus at Antioch and nearly ten years of living with his widowed mother, who instilled suspicion of Tiberius as murderer of his father, suspicion which must have seemed confirmed when he saw her and his brother Nero sent into exile and Drusus removed to custody. In 29 he moved to the house of his grand­mother Antonia, where he would meet the three young Thracian princes Polemo, Rhoemetalces and Cotys; unexpectedly the neglected boy was summoned to Capreae to receive the toga virilism an augurate, a priesthood and praise from his great-uncle, with whom he was now to live. In 33 he became quaestor and was granted the right of holding office five years before the usual age; this marked him out, towns in Italy and the provinces selected him for honours, and shrewd men such as Macro or Julius Agrippa saw that he must be heir and was worth cultivating. Now after six years of repression and caution, of fear and suspicion, of living in an atmosphere of intrigue, the young man, with his excitable and perverse ancestry, and for years severely kept in order, suddenly found himself in possession of almost unimaginable powers and everyone’s adoration.

It would have taken a far stronger and more disciplined mind to withstand so violent a change; although Gaius was not lacking in sharpness and wit, as displayed in his oratory or sayings, he was fatally inexperienced; he had held no magisterial office of importance and commanded no army, and had had nothing even of the training which sons of noble houses might expect. It is not surprising that, after a few months inspired by the vague universal benevolence that sudden prosperity often produces, he should have realized (helped by advisers such as Agrippa) the sweets and possibilities of autocracy and finally been ruined by its overpowering influence. Herein Josephus is correct in contrasting the earlier and the later Gaius, his mind overbalanced by power. Most of our sources, however, content in the thought that Gaius was ‘mad,’ present a nightmarish disorder of events and actions, in which the character of Gaius has been so distorted by hatred and sensationalism that we cannot hope to see clear, and can only deplore the loss of the more sober Tacitus.

But at first the young man was a paragon: family affection had always been strong in the house of Germanicus, and Gaius demonstrated this when in stormy weather he brought back the ashes of his mother and brother from their islands[; to his grandmother Antonia he granted the title of Augusta and the honours Livia had enjoyed, he adopted Tiberius Gemellus and by nominating him princeps iuventutis marked him out as heir, chose his uncle, the despised Claudius, as colleague for his first consulship, 1 July 37, and gave to his sisters the privileges of Vestal Virgins; he gained for Tiberius a public funeral and paid punctually not only the legacies due from his estate but also those from Livia’s, which Tiberius had simply neglected. In his first days he announced his programme, a return to Augustan ideas and to co-operation with the Senate, to whom he exhibited the greatest deference and respect. For example, he asked its permission to exceed the legal number of gladiators.

In fact there was to be a complete and decisive reversal of the policy of Tiberius: he denounced his rule to the Senators and showed himself the exact opposite; political exiles were brought home, informers and sycophants punished, elections were to be given back to the People, there were to be no unpopular taxes, histories and writings that had been banned and burnt could circulate again, and actors were allowed to return, for the people was to have its shows and games once more, in which the princeps took as much pleasure as they. To make the work of the jurymen less onerous a fifth decuria was added to the existing four. No longer would arrogant despatches from a distant ruler reach the Senate, for in their midst was now a prince young, humane and sympathetic, who could refuse to accept more than a small part of statues and gifts offered by a Greek koinon ‘so that you shall burden yourselves less with expenses.’ The age of gold might have returned, and the solemn dedication on 30th of August of the templum Divi Augusti, which Tiberius had not yet done, was carried through with impressive ceremonial.

But some six months after his accession, in mid-October, Gaius fell dangerously ill; the empire was in agony, for should he die the danger of civil war could not be far distant; sacrifices and anxious vows were everywhere offered. Gaius recovered, but henceforward we observe a change: intoxicated by a sense of power he was determined that no one should share it with him, no one dictate to him; Agrippa was at hand to whisper how a monarch should behave, and now he got rid of his adopted son Tiberius Gemellus, and drove his prosy father-in-law M. Junius Silanus to suicide; Macro (whose patronage he could not tolerate and whose merits he had not been allowed to forget) and his wife Ennia were ordered to kill themselves and it may be that the Alexandrian Isidorus had a hand in their overthrow. And unfortunately on the 10th of June 38 there died the one person to whom he was devoted, whom he had named as his heir, and who might have exercised a restraining influence upon him, his sister Drusilla; in his first grief he thought of suicide but consoled himself finally by commanding a long period of mourning, and by ordaining her deification; as Diva Drusilla or Panthea or Thea Nea Aphrodite Drusilla she was to be worshipped by Italy and provinces alike.

Soon an awkward need made itself felt, money. For the newly restored games and largesses Gaius needed cash, and he had dug deeply already into the ample reserves (said to have been 2,700,000,000 sesterces) bequeathed to him by the thrift of his predecessor; on a favourite charioteer he bestowed two million sesterces, to Livius Geminius (who swore he had seen Drusilla soaring heavenward) he gave a million, to Antiochus whom he installed as king of Commagene a hundred million, while bequests totalling forty-five millions were paid out of Tiberius’ will, not to mention the cost of the rejoicings which accompanied the dedication of the temple of Augustus or Gaius’ birthday or the restored games.

If the need for money thus became acute Gaius found ways of meeting it. The chemists of the time suggested he might win gold from orpiment, but he soon discovered surer methods. There is a possibility that the death of Macro put him in possession of information about the trials of his mother and brother, and that he realized what an instrument for extortion lay to his hand in delatio; for now he openly praised the policy of Tiberius, abused the senators as ‘ satellites of Sejanus’ and became accessible to informers; trials, confiscations and executions began again. But he manifested a more dangerous trend still: the blood of Augustus, as he declared, flowing pure and untainted in his veins, gave him a divine title to rule, and henceforward he began to equate himself with divinity, though at first only with demigods such as Castor and Pollux. Finding his every act applauded and meeting with no opposition he became more and more conscious of his own pre­eminence and the more eager to make his supremacy in every sphere patent.

For when Nero boasted that none of his predecessors had understood what was permitted to princeps he was wrong; Gaius had understood, and in that comprehension he was a logical man among fools. If Drusilla was divine how much more so he who had ordained her deification; and if divine he could brook no limitations, as his speech often showed; when writing to his procurators in 40 he could remind them that they need not spare money for, through him, they possessed a right over every man’s property. And yet with the curious contrariety of megalomania, while at one moment delighted by the reception of honours and titles from the Senate at another he would be furious, for his  acceptance of them suggested that there was some body which stood high enough to favour him. He would have no rival or equal: he began to hear cases on appeal even from the Senate, and the great senatorial nobles or commanders of armies were especial objects of suspicion; on them his attack first fell especially as he was preparing a great expedition to the North and wished to be secure from revolutionary movements. In the summer of 39 Calvisius Sabinus was recalled from his governorship of Pan­nonia and put on trial; his wife Cornelia was accused not only of adultery but of currying favour with the troops, like an Agrippina or Plancina. In Africa Gaius took away the control of the legion from the senatorial governor and entrusted it to an imperial officer. Senators such as Titius Rufus or Junius Priscus were compelled to commit suicide. Eminence in any walk of life excited his envy: from young Cn. Pompeius Magnus, the holder of a once mighty name, he cut off the title Magnus, he belittled the genius of Virgil, and visited orators with his special jealousy; Domitius Afer, whose brilliance might over-shadow his own, saved himself only by tactful admiration, and the younger Seneca escaped because he was rumoured to be dying of consumption. Jurisconsults must not oppose him or venture to offer their opinions, for he was Law incarnate and the sole source of decisions. The praetorians he could trust, and he apparently increased their numbers, but mindful of the dangerous powers of Sejanus or Macro he divided the prefecture among two. With this bent of mind he was turning definitely towards the institution of monarchy, and for this two things were necessary, the open public recognition of his manifest divinity and the military glory of a conqueror. His deification is noticed elsewhere, but one of his most sensational acts is placed by Dio in the summer of 39, when he is said to have made a bridge of boats across the Bay of Baiae and ridden upon the sea in triumph, wearing the breast­plate of Alexander the Great. The new Alexander, longing for a world to conquer, would naturally look for glory in Germany and the North, where his ancestors had won their laurels.

II. 

GERMANY AND JUDAEA

In the North there was, in fact, much that needed the attention of an imperator. There was trouble in Germany itself, there had been raids in which the Canninefates, for example, had taken part, there was opportunity for effective intervention in Britain with its reputed wealth, whence a chieftain Amminius had fled to Gaius’ protection. Such were his pretexts; more sinister was the suspicion that his two sisters Agrippina and Julia were intriguing with M. Aemilius Lepidus (whose marriage to Drusilla might be thought to give him some claim to the throne) and were relying on support from Cn. Lentulus Gaetulicus, the too popular legate of Germany. It is certainly possible that dissatisfaction was finding vent in plots, and a suspected conspiracy would explain the extraordinary haste of Gaius’ departure for the North in September 39, would explain also the facts that Lepidus and Gaetulicus were both executed by mid-October, that Gaius wrote to the Senate informing them that he had escaped from a vast conspiracy, and drove Julia and Agrippina into exile, while the latter, in hideous burlesque of her mother’s journey twenty years before, was forced to bear the ashes of her lover Lepidus back to Rome. This may have been followed by some triumphant raids upon the German tribes, after which Gaius spent the winter in Gaul, entering upon his third consulship alone at the beginning of 40 at Lugdunum, receiving the congratulations of the Senate, auctioning imperial property at fancy prices and confiscating the estates of the richer Gauls; among his victims was Agricola’s father. Possibly in the spring of 40 he contemplated an invasion of Britain, but nothing came of it, and possibly fear of what might happen in Rome if he delayed his return too long brought him back: preparations for a triumph of unprecedented splendour were begun, client-kings were summoned to take their part, and Gaius declared that he was no longer going to work with the Senate but to overthrow it; on 31 August he entered Rome again.

So much may be tentatively put forward as a sketch of Gaius’ Northern journey, the rest is hidden under such a smoke-screen of ridicule, hatred and misrepresentation that it cannot be discerned. We are asked to believe that his campaigns were a farce, with provincials dressed up in red wigs to look like Germans (it is worth noting that the same kind of caricature was later made of Domitian’s German campaigns); he flies panic-stricken at the first sound of alarm, he has his uncle Claudius, at the head of a congratulatory embassy from the Senate, ducked in the Rhone, on the shores of the Channel he bids his legionaries collect sea-shells as spoils of victory—and so on ad nauseam. On all this one need merely remark that the soldiers would have certainly revolted against such a mountebank, and they did not.

Arrived back in Rome he soon made his object clear; whereas he had started on the model of Augustus he would now no longer be a princess ruling in conjunction with the Senate; rather he would be monarch and master, worshipped as a god (it mattered not which, for he could manifest his deity under any form), and ruling his empire as a sort of Great King over a series of vassals. On his return from Gaul he had with him Agrippa and Antiochus of Commagene, who were viewed with deep disfavour in Rome as ‘tyranny-teachers’; other client-kings (including Ptolemy of Mauretania) had been summoned to attend, and he himself very nearly assumed the diadem of autocracy. In this, as in much else, his reign shows a complete reversal of Tiberian tendencies; Tiberius, in care for the frontiers, had disestablished client-kingdoms bordering upon the Euphrates; Gaius distributed kingdoms in the East lavishly, and perversely enough struck down two clients whom Tiberius had left unmolested; Mithridates of Armenia had offended in some manner, he was put in custody and then dismissed to exile, while Ptolemy by drawing upon him­self the attention of the populace in the theatre aroused his jealousy and was bidden kill himself. Mauretania was to be annexed, but the people, under a loyal freedman, Aedemon, flew to arms, and a war in that difficult country was a legacy that Gaius left to his successor.

But for all his other princely friends he found situations in the first year of his reign; to the sons of king Cotys, his boyhood’s companions, he granted three kingdoms, Lesser Armenia to Cotys, Pontus-with-Bosporus to Polemo, and the old half kingdom of Thrace, which had been the father’s, to Rhoemetalces, so that the Thracians had now two Rhoemetalces ruling over them simultaneously. Perhaps he regarded these donations as a demonstration of pietas, for the three young princes could claim a common descent through their mother Antonia Tryphaena from Mark Antony. But these did not exhaust his generosity; Laco, dynast of Sparta, who had incurred the disfavour of Tiberius, was restored to his post, an obscure Sohaemus was raised to be king of the Ituraean Arabians, and prince Antiochus, son of the former king of Commagene, received back his father’s possessions with part of the coast of Cilicia added, while in reparation for the loss of revenue during that period he was given one hundred million sesterces. (Possibly the city of Caesarea Germaniceia in Commagene was founded by him, for its Era may have begun in 38.) Chief in his favour was the astute and ambitious Agrippa, who had supported his cause in early days and could claim to have suffered imprisonment for his zeal, and for several years his restless nature played a large part in Roman politics. Gaius released him from prison and kept him by his side; only after the death of Drusilla did he allow him to return (? late July 3 8) to the kingdom of Trachonitis and Ituraea that he had granted him. But Agrippa was fated to stir up trouble wherever he went, and when he put in at Alexandria on his voyage a seemingly slight incident led to incalculable results.

The Alexandrians had no love for Jewish princes and had possibly not forgotten that the new king had only a few years back stolen away to Italy owing a huge debt. The mocking welcome that they gave him swelled into an anti-Jewish riot, actually aided and abetted by the governor of Egypt, Avillius Flaccus, and though Gaius recalled him to stand his trial, the mischief was done. The enmity between Jew and Greek in Alexandria now spread to Syria, ready to blaze up at a moment’s notice, and it is likely enough that the warfare between the two nations at Antioch, which Malalas 3 chronicles in 39—40, has a foundation in fact. But inwthe year 40 an unlucky incident led to an explosion in the very home of Judaism.

This time the disorder was not due to Agrippa, though he had already succeeded in improving his position against his uncle Antipas. Antipas, who thought that a personal journey to Rome would give him the advantage, found to his surprise that his nephew had anticipated him by a letter accusing him of intrigues with Sejanus and general disloyalty; he was banished to Gaul and Agrippa was rewarded with his uncle’s realm of Galilee and Peraea. The trouble in Judaea was due to Jewish and not Greek intolerance and arose from a riot in Jamnia. This sea-coast town was the centre of an imperial estate (it had been bequeathed by Salome to Livia) with a mixed population of Jews and Greeks, managed by a procurator Herennius Capito, who had been cheated some years before by Agrippa and cherished no goodwill towards his nation. Some Greeks and others erected an altar to Gaius, probably in the spring of AD 40 and to celebrate his German victories1: the Jews tore it down, and Capito wrote angrily to his master. Gaius had returned to Italy some two months before August, more convinced of his godhead than before; he had already given a cool reception to a Jewish embassy from Alexandria (headed by Philo), and now, determined to end this stubborn disloyalty, he sent orders to Petronius (who replaced Vitellius as legatus of Syria) to set up a colossal statue of himself in Jerusalem, using two legions if necessary to overawe resistance. Petronius advanced as far as Ptolemais; in frenzied fear for their Temple the Jewish population deserted their farms and fields, neglecting the autumn sowing, and gathered to protest; Petronius realized the gravity of the situation and advised the workers of Sidon, where the statue was to be made, to take their time. King Agrippa did his best to intercede with Gaius: whatever happened, whether we believe with Philo that he moved Gaius’ mind by a long and philosophical letter, or follow Josephus who declares that he gave him a lavish banquet, somehow he succeeded in getting the order rescinded. But in a few months Gaius veered again: he was projecting a visit to Alexandria and Egypt, where he would manifest his divinity, and he now gave orders for a statue for Jerusalem to be made in Rome and wrote a cold letter to Petronius containing a command for suicide. Revolt must have followed, but on the 24th January 41 Gaius was killed and Jewry released from fear; the news travelled fast and reached Petronius soon enough to enable him to peruse with calm the death-warrant, now invalid, which he received a few days later.

III. 

TYRANNY

While revolt had broken out in Mauretania and was near breaking out in Judaea matters were not mending in Rome. Gaius had returned as the sworn enemy of the Senate, and though his future plans are uncertain, it looks as though he intended to embark upon a long coasting voyage to Alexandria, perhaps following in the tracks of his father Germanicus; finally in Egypt would be celebrated that triumph which he had refused to hold in Rome (where he had contented himself with an ovatio), and surrounded by his client-kings the Great King would appear in all his divine glory to his worshippers. The provincials had already recognized the divinity of Gaius: on coins of Amphipolis and Ilium he is entitled theos, and in Miletus a temple was erected to him, but in the autumn of a.d. 40 (if we can believe Dio) two temples were erected to him actually in Rome, one by the Senate, the other by himself: the temple of Castor and Pollux was a mere vestibule to his palace. And this deification was profitable too: his uncle Claudius and his own wife Caesonia, whom he had married in the winter of 39/40, had to pay down two million sesterces for the privilege of priesthood. For Gaius’ need for money had not disminished; on his return to Rome he clapped new taxes on every available source of income, on the sale of eatables, on litigation, on prostitutes, on the daily earnings of porters and carriers, and when the populace in the theatre shouted against these new burdens he sent soldiers to cut them down. In three and a half years he had alienated all classes, but deliverance appeared doubtful, for a conspiracy that was formed against him was betrayed from within by Anicius Cerealis, and the members of it executed with a savagery that appalled. Some names we know, but doubtless more perished nameless, and it was not only the cruelty of Gaius that made men shiver but the hard joy he took in it. Extremely sensitive himself to personal insult or physical pain, he took pleasure in inflicting them on others; rumour declared that his favourite order to his executioners was ‘kill him so that he can feel she is dying.’ Though something must be allowed for exaggeration and for the sen­sationalism of the political pamphlet,—and we know that as late as the autumn of 40 he could pity and reward an actress, Quintilia, for the tortures she endured for her lover’s sake,—yet it must be admitted that in the main these stories ring true, and that in the year 40 a tyrant was ruling in Rome.

For though Gaius, after the suppression of this conspiracy and a servile display of the Senate, professed himself reconciled, yet no one could feel his life secure. A governor with a record as good as Vitellius, recalled from Syria, only saved himself by abasement and gross flattery to the new deity, and others were ready enough to introduce proskynesis and Eastern customs; indeed to one man whom he had pardoned Gaius graciously extended his foot to kiss. Memmius Regulus in Greece nearly lost his life for delay in dispatching the statue of Olympian Zeus to his master, Petronius of Syria was in equal danger, Cassius Longinus was summoned from Asia on suspicion, and we can discern too the beginnings of the long quarrel between philosophy and the Principate. In 39 a rhetorician, Carrinas Secundus, had been driven into exile for reciting a conventional exercise against tyranny, and (probably in 40) Gaius attacked a little band of Stoics and philosophers, including Julius Kanus and his friends, Antiochus of Seleuceia and Rectus. What was the ground of accusation is unknown, but Kan us was sentenced to death, and Rectus followed him three days after. Henceforward philosophy could be suspect, and though Seneca, some twenty years later, deplored the notion that the devotees of philosophy were stubborn opponents of government and officials, the suspicion remained and more victims were to fall under Claudius and Nero1.

With Senate and nobles outraged and fearful, and with the mob hostile, the final touch of folly would be to offend the officers of the army. Yet Gaius did so: he insulted beyond endurance a tribune of the Praetorian Guards, Cassius Chaerea by name, and now at last a plot was made which had some hope of success, for not only were some of the nobles involved, but also the influential palace freedman Callistus, Chaerea himself and the two prefects of the praetorians. It was essential to act soon for Gaius was planning his trip to Alexandria, and once in the East he would be safer. On 24 January 41 the first blow was dealt by Chaerea, and the hated body was struck and pierced again and again by the conspirators, who then rushed to summon the Senate and announce the return of ‘Liberty.’ Caesonia was stabbed by a centurion, and her daughter was dashed against a wall. Such was the end of Gaius and his family; his corpse was hastily burned and buried in the Lamian gardens, but restless as he had been in life so he was rumoured to be in death; men said his uneasy spirit haunted the gardens until he was properly buried.

But though Gaius had been removed the evil that he had done remained and that was grave. Four years’ extravagance and folly had emptied the Treasury and brought the city near famine, yet men could not look back on one useful piece of legislation or one notable work. His grandiose schemes to cut through the Isthmus of Corinth or build harbours of refuge for the corn-ships near the Straits of Messana came to nothing; he pulled down the Aqua Virgo and forgot to rebuild it. On a young man without experience or training, and so without any sense of responsibility, his position as the ruler of the Empire had a shattering effect: he merely viewed it as so many opportunities for gratifying his pleasures or exhibiting his power. The precise nature of the malady from which he suffered may never be determined; all our sources agree in recording the frenzied energy that hurried him on, and Suetonius has a pitiful picture of sleepless nights, when he would wander restlessly through the Palace crying for the dawn; in any case it is matter more for the psychiatrist than the historian. Far worse than the effects upon Gaius were the results of his rule on Senate and people. His autocracy was unconcealed: when two consuls offended him he deprived them of their office and smashed their fasces, he ordered the Arvai Brethren to co-opt as he wished, he apparently began the minting of imperial money in Rome. Such an exercise of power drove home on the Senate the lesson that the absence of Tiberius had begun, that Senate and nobles were helpless before princeps backed by military power and guarded by praetorians; we read that when Gaius appeared in the Senate-house to praise the policy of Tiberius and to reintroduce delation the Senators listened and voted honours to him for his clemency, that when an imperial freedman Protogenes attacked one of their number as being Caesar’s enemy the rest fell on him and dispatched him with their knives, and we ask ‘Could self- abasement and servility farther go?’ The fury with which his name and memory were attacked, as witnessed by the tradition about him, is a measure of the hatred and shame of the senatorial order, impotent save against the dead. In the provinces and on the frontiers Gaius left no great military success, no considerable undertaking; on the contrary he had weakened the defensive efficiency of the Empire by his restitution of the system of client- kings, driven the people of Mauretania to rebellion, and in Judaea ruined the effect of Vitellius’ conciliation; the Jews looked on Gaius as a second Antiochus Epiphanes, bent on destroying their race and religion; from that time onwards they could never trust a Roman ruler again, and to that extent Gaius precipitated the tragedy of the Jewish revolt and the fall of Jerusalem. Such were the results to which the Principate of Augustus, based on a scheme of family succession, had apparently led, and naturally enough the Senate was ready to debate whether a principate should continue at all; but the Senate was no longer master of the situation.

IV.

 CLAUDIUS. CAPITAL AND COURT

The Senate met; the session lasted until a late hour of the night, for though the consuls Cn. Sentius Saturninus and Q. Pomponius Secundus were fervent for liberty and a restoration of the Republic, more thought of release from the Julian house than of abolishing the Principate; if the system were to continue there was no lack of candidates, wealthy men such as Annius Vinicianus or Valerius Asiaticus in Rome, or governors of provinces like Servius Sulpicius Galba or Furius Camillus Scribonianus, both of whom were urged on by their friends. But the Senate was not the final arbiter. Amid the confusion and licence that followed the murder of Gaius some Praetorians found his uncle Claudius in hiding, recognized him as a Germanicus and hurried him to the camp to greet him as Imperator. The Senate thought to bully him out of it, and sent an embassy headed by two tribunes, Veranius and Brocchus, bidding him return. But the conclusion was foregone: Claudius had as his intermediary King Agrippa, who saw a chance of reaping an even richer harvest than he had from Gaius’ accession, the Senate was not at one, the mob shouted for a princeps, and the urban cohorts who had at first protected the Senate soon joined with the Praetorians. On 25 January, escorted by the Praetorians to whom he gave a handsome donative (the first given by a princeps for his accession, and an evil precedent), he was duly recognized by the Senate, received the titles of Imperator, Augustus, and Pontifex Maximus, and the tribunician power, and henceforward as Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ruled the empire for nearly fourteen years.

The new princeps was in his fiftieth year when Fortune brought him to power by a turn of her wheel so strange that Tacitus sees in it convincing proof of the chance that mocks human affairs. He had been despised by his mother and his family as an invalid and an imbecile: infantile paralysis in some form left its mark upon his frame: in a civilization that admired bodily grace and fitness Claudius had an ungainly gait, weak knees, a shaking head, a slobbering mouth and a thick uncouth utterance. Yet though neglected and allowed no part in public affairs, though on the Arch at Pavia he is named last of all the imperial housed Augustus had discerned his latent ability. People and soldiers felt a sympathetic respect for a son of Drusus and brother of Germanicus, and the Equites chose him on occasion as their representative. Disappointed in his hopes of a career, he flung himself on scholarly studies, with Livy as a guide and friend; he read deeply and wrote voluminously—we hear of histories of Carthage and of Etruria, of a defence of Cicero (answering Asinius Gallus’ attacks), of treatises on Dice and the Alphabet. He ranked among the most erudite men of his time; Pliny the Elder cites him four times as an authority; to him scientists and savants could write or might dedicate their treatises; before the Senate he could unfold his learning in early Roman history or his knowledge of the antiquities of Cos, on other occasions instruct his subjects on cures for snake-bite or calm their superstitious fears with the explanation of the causes of an eclipse.

Yet though when he was called upon to rule, apart from an augurate and a two-months’ consulship in 37 and occasional presiding at the Games, he lacked (in this resembling Gaius) all administrative experience, he was after all a Claudius, with generations of political capacity behind him, and his historical studies had taught him something of the meaning and mission of Rome denied to those contemporaries who jeered at him. At the best they could glimpse in him merely an unpractical amiability; they could not see beyond the uncouth figure and ludicrous mishaps of their ruler, and so we hear ad nauseam of the Claudius who wished to see all men wearing the toga, whose first recitation was a fiasco, who was ducked in the Rhone or drenched by the outburst of the Fucine tunnel, the butt of Gaius’ parties, the timid slave of his wives or freedmen who played skilfully on his fears and his affections. The discovery of inscriptions and papyri and closer study of his acts and utterances enable us to pass a very different verdict. But it will be well first briefly to review the events of his life and reign at Rome as represented by the tradition and after that consider the other evidence.

Claudius’ first task was to secure his position by appeasing all parties and by effacing, as far as possible, the unfortunate memory of the reigns of his two predecessors. Chaerea and the chief conspirators had to be removed or remove themselves: that was unavoidable, for the murder of a Caesar could not be condoned, but to all others, even to possible rivals, he showed a forgiving spirit. Asiaticus and Saturninus he counted among his friends, Galba took part in the expedition to Britain, and Veranius was promoted later to be imperial governor of Lycia. The Senate he treated with the utmost deference and he evinced his readiness to return to the normal constitutional principate: it is probable that he restored to the Senate the right of elections which Gaius had in 37 returned to the People; he only held four consulships in all, the second in 42, the third in 43, the fourth in 47 and the fifth in 51. For eighteen months in 47 and 48 he held the censorship with his trusted friend L. Vitellius, during which he carried out a lectio Senatus, numbered the people and celebrated Secular Games1. A year after came the solemn taking of the Augurium Salutis and a performance of the Lusus Troiae. All this was on the Augustan model; he was not going to be as either of his predecessors; coins proclaimed the return of Augustan peace and Augustan liberty and his strongest oath was by the divine Augustus. Much of Gaius’ ill-doing was reversed: his papers were burnt, his exiles recalled, the new taxes he had imposed were gradually abolished, his thefts from Athens and other towns restored, the temple of Castor and Pollux was returned to the twin brethren, and Protogenes and another favourite freedman Helicon were put to death. Although Gaius’ memory was never officially condemned, Claudius removed many statues and reminders of him unobtrusively, and referred openly to his folly and madness.

But reaction against Gaius was not to imply the gloom and in­activity of Tiberius: throughout his reign Claudius gratified the people with gladiatorial shows, games and imposing spectacles such as his triumph for Britain, his display of the British chieftain Caratacus, the Secular Games, the reception of an embassy from Ceylon, or the opening of the Fucine tunnel. The army-commanders were placated by ready grants of titles and distinctions, and the troops rejoiced in a son of Drusus and brother of Germanicus under whom there was plenty of campaigning and who for various successes gained took the title of Imperator no less than twenty-seven times. Upon the Seventh and Eleventh Legions, which refused to support a disloyal governor in 42, he bestowed the titles of Claudia, Pia, Fidelis, and in 46 he granted to all legionaries (who were not allowed to marry during their term of service) the privilegia maritorum. Names such as Corbulo, Galba, Vespasian, Hosidius Geta and Suetonius Paulinus, who were all to become famous later, reveal how capably generals were chosen and explain the good discipline and contentment of the army. Although he put a stop to the colossal building-schemes of Gaius, a great deal of useful and necessary work was carried out on roads and aqueducts, and the corn-supply was safeguarded by the construction of a new harbour and moles near Ostia and by the grant of special privileges to corn-shippers.

Admirable though much of this was, yet among the nobles in Rome itself Claudius’ rule failed to find favour, and that for two reasons due to the gradual development of the Principate. The property of the princeps had within three generations swollen far beyond the limits of the richest private household; this, coupled with the vast amount of business that normally fell to his lot, meant that his secretaries and stewards were becoming, in effect, State officials whose influence was great and permanent, and this influence was exercised by freedmen, mostly of Greek or Asiatic origin, whose antecedents, arrogance, and power were alike dis­pleasing to the Roman aristocracy. The other factor was the tendency, which had been promoted by Gaius, to invest not only the princeps, but also members of his family, especially his wife, with a privileged position. Herein lay new and dangerous possibilities, for these freedmen possessed power without office or responsibility and would not be shocked by breaches in a tradition of which they were ignorant or disdainful, while the wife of the Princeps held a position for which there was no precedent or parallel. To the freedmen, Callistus, Narcissus, Pallas and others, their posts meant riches beyond their dreams, to Messallina, who was Claudius’ wife at his accession, it meant pleasure without restraint; she had borne two children, the elder a girl Octavia, the younger a son and heir whom Claudius had proudly shown to the people, usually called (after his father’s British triumph) Britannicus, and she was sure of her hold on her husband. Claudius relied—naturally enough considering his scholarly bent—upon his wife and freedmen in all matters that did not interest him, and between them they gratified their utmost desires, putting out of the way all whom they feared or whose possessions they coveted.

For although Claudius is said to have sworn that he would not regard insults by speech or action against himself as treasonable, other ways lay open; before the court of the princeps himself men and. women could be accused, Messallina or the freedmen could employ the services of L. Vitellius or Suillius Rufus, who played on the superstition or timidity of their master and could be sure of a conviction. Tradition records a large number of victims during the thirteen years, 35 senators and 300 knights, but the sources at our disposal do not render a proper check possible. Some of these undoubtedly perished as adherents of conspiracies. Thus in 42 Furius Camillus Scribonianus in Dalmatia was induced to revolt; but his two legions soon deserted him, he himself committed suicide, and accomplices such as Annius Vinicianus, Pomponius Secundus or Caecina Paetus followed his example; others implicated must have been executed. A few years later a plot by Statilius Corvinus and Gallus Asinius was discovered, resulting in the death of Statilius and the banishment of Gallus, and in 47 we hear of an attempted assassination by a knight, Cn. Nonius. Many, however, fell victims to the jealousy or anger or cupidity of Messallina; Julia daughter of Drusus, Julia daughter of Germanicus (accused of adultery with the young savant Seneca, who was exiled to Corsica), Catonius Justus the Praetorian Prefect, Cn. Pompeius Magnus and his mother Scribonia, Crassus Frugi and the wealthy Valerius Asiaticus were the most notable names, but we should probably place in these early years and ascribe to the avarice of Messallina the trials of many of those ‘herds of knights’ whom Suillius was later charged with sending to execution, and which helped to swell the total. But in the end Messallina over-reached herself: her amours with an actor such as Mnester or with unimportant knights might be overlooked and could be hidden from Claudius, but in her final infatuation for C. Silius, handsome, wealthy and noble, there lay the peril of a revolution. Against all warnings she persisted and Narcissus destroyed her: he took charge of the bewildered Claudius and ordered her execution, while Silius with numerous friends and associates was hurried to death.

A new wife had now to be found for Claudius. While Narcissus recommended a return to Aelia Paetina, Pallas supported the claims of Agrippina the younger, Claudius’ niece, twice a widow, with a son born of her first marriage to Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus. She had somehow managed to escape the attentions of Messallina; as one of the few surviving children of Germanicus and as a descendant of Divus Augustus she might be a danger if married to a citizen, and union with Claudius would solve many difficulties. But marriage with an uncle seemed incestuous and it needed all the persuasions of Vitellius—in a speech which must have sounded like a burlesque of the Claudian manner—to rouse the Senate to demand it. The marriage was solemnized early in 48 and life in the palace took on a very different aspect; whereas Messallina had cared for nothing but pleasure Agrippina was a woman of high ambition and indomitable will, who loved power and wealth and the open display of both. Formality and decorum prevailed: she herself, greeted as Augusta and allowed unprecedented privileges, used to appear by the side of her husband at great public functions, splendidly dressed and usurping the place of a consort. At the same time she began to intrigue for the setting-aside of Britannicus in favour of her own son, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, to whom she was devoted; Seneca was recalled from Corsica in 49, given a praetorship and appointed as his tutor, and the two Praetorian Prefects, Rufrius Crispinus and Lusius Geta, were replaced in AD 51 by Afranius Burrus, on whom she could rely.

But though greater strictness prevailed at court the new marriage brought no change injudicial terrorism. Agrippina was completely unscrupulous: she had not hesitated to poison her cousin Crispus Passienus for the estates that she knew he would leave her, and now, in her determination to secure herself and her son, she struck down all those whose rivalry she feared or whose riches she coveted, and the pretext used was mostly the dreaded one of magic; on this charge or the like she got rid of the younger Scribonianus and of Statilius Taurus, of Lollia Paulina or Domitia Lepida. In 52, following the condemnation of Taurus, the Senate passed a decree, similar to the one that had followed the condemnation of Libo Drusus, against all mathematici and such­like practitioners, in whose power Agrippina and Claudius believed as credulously as the meanest of their subjects. Thus treason-trials and delation began to be employed again, and though it was no part of Claudius’ policy to frighten or uproot the old aristocracy, his wives and freedmen between them practically brought about such a state of things; these judicial murders were the worst aspect of his Principate and cannot be extenuated.

The last few years of Claudius witnessed a struggle for power among those behind the throne. Narcissus, who had been all-influential and who was possessed by a not ignoble devotion to his master, found that Pallas was against him and had the formidable gratitude and support of Agrippina herself; while he worked for Britannicus the other two made every effort to advance Nero and push Britannicus into the background. At last in the year 50 Agrippina prevailed upon her husband formally to adopt Nero as a guardian for the younger Britannicus—there was really only five years difference between them—and after that the rest was easy. In 51, at the age of thirteen, he assumed the toga virilis, and was designated to hold the consulship in his twentieth year; in the meantime he was to hold a proconsular imperium outside the city and to have the title of Princeps luventutis. In 53 he made his first public appearance, speaking before the Senate on behalf of various communities such as Bononia and Ilium, and in this year he was also married to Octavia the daughter of Claudius. Everything had gone according to plan, and nothing could have been more ‘Augustan’; just as Tiberius had been given the hand of Augustus’ daughter Julia in order to act as guardian to the young Caesares, so now Nero. Agrippina could look forward with complete confidence to seeing Nero emperor when Claudius should die, and even to playing a large part in the ruling of the Empire thanks to the influence she would exert over her young and devoted son. But before narrating the way in which she achieved her ends it is necessary to consider Claudius’ work in the provinces and in the administration of the Empire, for only here can his true importance be appreciated.

V.

THE PROVINCES AND CLIENT-KINGS

In his provincial and foreign policy Claudius was remarkably energetic: new territories were added to the Empire, many of the older client-kingdoms were incorporated and others were brought into closer contact with the imperial administration. More stress was laid on the military functions of the princeps as protector and enlarger of the realm: the defensive caution of Tiberius was abandoned—save along the line of the Rhine and Danube—and the pretences of Gaius were transformed into real soldiering. In this as in the succeeding section any connected account can be no more than a reconstruction, based partly upon such information as the literary sources can spare from the more absorbing topic of home affairs, and partly upon epigraphic material which, valuable as it is, often raises as many questions as it solves. But in spite of these limitations some attempt at a general account must be made, for Claudius’ Principate marks a great advance in several directions.

In reviewing his administration it is convenient to move from south-west to south-east and to begin with Africa. Although at first no change was made here and the division between the senatorial governor and the imperial commander of the legion initiated by Gaius was retained, Claudius was ready to alter it if necessary, and when a revolt of the Musulamii troubled the province he appointed one of his most trusted generals, Galba, as governor—presumably of the whole area and with control over the legion—and Galba held office for two years with credit. Farther west Mauretania was the scene of more serious fighting: Gaius had obviously intended annexation in the autumn of 40 indeed the provincial Era of Mauretania begins from that year—but a freedman of the murdered king, Aedemon by name, kindled a successful revolt against the annexers and summoned help from various desert tribes; it needed some three or four years campaigning under distinguished commanders, such as Suetonius Paulinus and Hosidius Geta, with the help of native levies, before the country was properly pacified1. Mauretania was divided into two provinces, Caesariensis and Tingitana (with capitals at Iol-Caesarea and Tingi), each under an imperial equestrian procurator. It would be a mistake to picture the new territory as wild and uncivilized, for King Juba had done the work allotted to him well and the old Punic tradition still survived in several towns, as their coinage testifies; in fact these towns, or rather some of them, were now used for new settlements or received privileges which would enable them to become nuclei of Romanization round which less advanced communities could cluster. Thus colonies of veterans were sent to lol and Tipasa, to Lixus and Tingi, and inscriptions have recently revealed an act of political liberality which can scarcely have been isolated. A native of Western Mauretania, who had held high office in his community of Volubilis, during the revolt of Aedemon raised levies among his townsmen and fought for the Romans. To him and to his followers Claudius, when the request was made to him, granted Roman citizenship and the right of legal marriage cum peregrinis mulieribus, and to their town the status of a municipality. Furthermore, not only did he attach to the new municipality certain of the surrounding tribes as ‘incolae,’ but also granted it the right of disposing of the goods of its citizens who had died intestate during the war—goods which would have normally accrued to the Aerarium—and exemption from imperial taxation for ten years. These latter grants were certainly exceptional, for only in exceptional circumstances will a government surrender its claim upon monies due to it, but the gift of citizenship and municipal rights was in the truest Roman tradition of granting privileges where the beneficiaries had earned them by service and merit, and throughout Claudius remained true to this policy.

A smaller accession of territory, though a more sensational one and more satisfying to Claudius’ pride, was made in Britain. Quite apart from the political and military reasons for the expedition one most important consideration was that Claudius could thus prove himself a true son of the conqueror Drusus and keep the regard of the legionaries and generals; in fact he journeyed specially to Britain in the autumn of 43 in order to be present at the final victory. A colony of veterans was planted at Camulodunum (Colchester), the fringes of the new province were guarded by client-kingdoms, and in this reign or the next a new squadron, the classis Britannica, was formed to protect the coasts and shipping of the Channel. It was the achievement of which Claudius was most proud and to which his mind often returned: in 44 he celebrated a triumph, invitations for which he issued all over the Empire; provinces, cities, communities and associations innumerable sent him golden crowns and congratulatory embassies, and minor poets seized their opportunity. Aulus Plautius, the victorious general, was granted the honour of an ovatio on returning from his term of office in 47, and Claudius formally advanced the pomoerium as a symbol that he had enlarged the territory of the Roman people.

In Spain the foundation of a new town, Claudionerium, and steady road-making in the north-west bears witness to the increasing importance of that mineral region, but apart from that and possibly the unification of Nearer Spain after its division by Augustus  Claudius left little impression. Far different was his treatment of Gaul, the land of his birth: the conquest of Britain opened up fresh opportunities for trade and business activity; new roads were constructed in the regions of Normandy and Brittany, and new market-towns, Forum Claudii Vallensium (the former Octodurus) in the Valais, Forum Claudii Ceutronum in the Tarentaise—both upon important Alpine routes—and Claudiomagus (in Touraine) came into existence. Colonies were sent to Lugdunum Convenarum in Aquitania and to the town of the Ubii on the Rhine, which was now linked by a new road with the camp at Moguntiacum. Even more important was the willingness that Claudius betrayed in bestowing privileges on inhabitants of Gaul; it is not unlikely that whole communities, such as the tribe of the Ceutrones, received the ius Latii, but in addition some individuals gained the full Roman citizenship if their merits seemed to warrant the grant. To many this citizenship was enough and their ambition was satisfied; the richer and more influential, chiefs and sons of nobles, wanted more still—the public recognition of their right to hold office in Rome and so win entry to the Senate. Men from other provinces had already held magistracies, as had Valerius Asiaticus and other senators from Narbonese Gaul, but so far no one from the more recently conquered provinces of Gallia Comata had been allowed the privilege, not on account (as it would seem) of any legal hindrance or because their citizenship was of any minor status, but because of a deep-rooted prejudice against them. During his exercise of censorial power in 47/48 Claudius was approached by some of the Gallic notables, and he seized the occasion to outline his policy to the Senate; Tacitus preserves a pithy and coherent summary, and the famous bronze at Lyon a considerable fragment, of the rambling oration that he pronounced1. His theme was simple—that the State must not be afraid of new measures and that Rome had grown great by freely admitting precedents and by drawing the conquered to herself in generous union. It is easy to point out that the thought was not original, that Philip V of Macedon had long ago discerned the reason for Rome’s success2 and that it was by now a commonplace among historians and writers. But for a hundred who will pay lip-service to political generosity there may rarely be found one with courage and insight enough to carry it into practice. Such a one was Claudius, and whatever the Senate might say he clung to his resolution; it is very probable that he straightway brought into the Senate by the use of the power of adlectio some of the greater Gallic nobles, who might have scorned to go through the round of petty offices required to qualify them for normal entry to the Senate; but his speech was probably followed by a senatus consultum affirming the full right of all Roman citizens in Gaul to stand for office in Rome itself, and henceforward no presiding officer would dare refuse their names: the first to attain the coveted honour were the oldest Gallic allies of Rome, the Aedui.

Such liberality could scarcely have been shown to the Gauls had they not been at once protected and watched over by the legions upon the Rhine: the safeguarding of the long line stretching from the Atlantic to the Black Sea is described elsewhere, but it should be noted that though at either end of the line—in Britain and in the Bosporus—Claudius made advances, along the Rhine and Danube he pursued steadily the diplomatic policy that he had inherited. The Cherusci consented to accept a king from Rome, and though Vannius was expelled from the land in which Tiberius had placed him, he and his followers were settled in Pannonia, while his two successors Vangio and Sido were recognized as joint rulers; two fleets patrolled the whole length of the Danube. Raetia and Noricum were two important connecting links between north Italy and the upper Danube frontier, and Claudius displayed activity here. One of the greatest works of his censorship was the re-organization of communications throughout this region. A road 350 miles long, the Via Claudia Augusta, ran from Altinum over the Reschen-Scheideck Pass to the Danube at Druisheim near Donauworth, through the scene of his father Drusus’ earliest independent campaign, and a subsidiary road connected this with towns in the valley of the Drave such as Aguntum and Teurnia1. Noricum itself, which Augustus had at first governed through a praefectus, now became an imperial province under an equestrian procurator; its peaceful and advanced state may be gathered from the facts that no troops garrisoned it and that Claudius gave municipal rights to various important centres, Aguntum, Teurnia, Virunum and Celeia.

Towards the East Pannonia, which received a colony at Savaria, and Moesia were more backward regions where less could be done for Romanization and where governors had to be constantly on the watch, even prepared to lead legions as far to the north-east as the Bosporan kingdom. In addition the Greek cities of the Dobrudja and near the mouth of the Danube looked to Rome for protection and jurisdiction and we find governors of Moesia settling boundaries and confirming rights. One change of considerable importance was made: the client­kingdom of Thrace had always been a source of anxiety, owing to the turbulent nature of its subjects and no less to the intermittent feuds in the royal family itself, and, when in or before 46 King Rhoemetalces III was murdered by his own wife, Claudius decided to end the Thracian question once and for all by annexation. The process cost some fighting, but the kingdom was finally transformed into a province under an equestrian procurator; a colony was settled at Apri and a koinon of Thracian cities for the worship of the Caesars appears as from this date. The work of pacification was thorough and we hear of no more uprisings.

For the eastern half of the empire the evidence is more frag­mentary, but enough remains (when combined from coins and inscriptions) to indicate that Claudius was as active here as in the West. In Syria he planted a colony at Ptolemais Ace composed of veterans from the four legions (III Gallica, VI Ferrata, X Fretensis, and XII Fulminata) that made up the Syrian army, and apparently bestowed some privileges on Tyre, which from now on took the title Claudiopolis. Beyond the frontier the existence of a Claudian tribe in Palmyra suggests the spread of Roman influence and a desire to honour the emperor. But it was in the peninsula of Asia Minor that he left the greatest impression; we have evidence for road-making along the coast in Bithynia (near Amastris) and in Pamphylia (near Adalia), and many cities, presumably for benefits received, adopted the name of the Emperor. Such were Bithynium, lying on the road between Nicomedeia and Amisus, which styled itself Claudiopolis, while in Paphlagonia there was a Neoclaudiopolis and in northern Pisidia Seleuceia Sidera became Claudio-Seleuceia and worshipped its benefactor as god manifest; in Lycaonia the towns of Iconium, Derbe and Laodicea Catacecaumene similarly added the name of the Emperor to their titles, while in the territory of the Galatian Trocmi there appeared yet another Claudiopolis. To the east the province of Cappadocia received a colony at Archelais (the older Garsaura), and the fortress-town of Claudiopolis (? Claudias) guarded one of the bends of the Euphrates. It would be unjust to assume that this was no more than the ostentation of princeps or the adulation of provincials. These foundations or newly privileged cities served either to promote trade and intercourse, lying as many of them did upon important routes, or else to protect or hold in check mountainous or frontier districts, so that here again Claudius was completing the work initiated by Augustus when he planted his five colonies in Pisidia and Lycaonia. This care for pacification and order explains a change in status which was carried through in 43: the communities of Lycia had been allowed to remain free but used this freedom merely to quarrel among themselves; Claudius decided that they were unfit for freedom and accordingly transformed them into an imperial province under a praetorian legatus Augusti pro praetors, the first of whom was Q. Veranius.

In the client-kingdoms Claudius mostly left undisturbed the arrangements of his predecessor, which it would have been unfriendly as well as unjust to upset, but as he gave the kingdom of Bosporus to Mithridates, he was bound to compensate Polemo for the loss, and so presented him with part of Cilicia; for the rest, Cotys retained Armenia Minor, Antiochus IV was restored to Commagene and a strip of coast-land in Cilicia, and Sohaemus kept Ituraea, while a brother of King Agrippa was granted the principality of Chalcis. In this region, however, one kingdom and one king demand longer notice because of the light thrown upon Roman policy.

King Agrippa had calculated well in supporting Claudius; his reward was not only the confirmation of the privileges of the Alexandrian Jews in particular and of Jews throughout the empire in general but the enlargement of his own kingdom, which now comprised Judaea proper, Samaria, Trachonitis, Auranitis, Abilene and districts round Lebanon. It amounted to a reconstitution of the realm of Herod the Great, and was at once a generous present to a friend and a skilful move for reducing and soothing the anger and indignation Gaius had stirred up among the Jews. For the time being it was highly successful, for Agrippa used his opportunities with his customary ability. By October 41 he was back in Jerusalem. While he never concealed his friendship to Rome and her ruler, calling himself Philokaisar and Philoromaios on his coins and inscriptions, and while he made magnificent presents to a Gentile city like Berytus, he yet managed to keep on good terms with the Jewish population and priesthood, by whom his memory was treasured after death1. But his restless intriguing spirit created uneasiness; in 42 he began the refortification of Jerusalem, and the governor of Syria, Vibius Marsus, promptly intervened. The next year came a meeting with various other kings at Tiberias, Herod of Chalcis (who had married Agrippa’s daughter Berenice), Antiochus IV of Commagene (whose son was to marry his daughter Drusilla), Polemo of Pontus, Cotys of Armenia Minor and Sampsiceramus of Emesa. It looked suspiciously like the formation of some common policy among the frontier-kingdoms, and Vibius abruptly broke up the conference1. Agrippa had to swallow his annoyance and his death in 44 relieved Rome of any more anxiety, but it is significant that Claudius allowed himself to be advised that the young son, Agrippa, then at Rome, had better not succeed to the large kingdom of his father; it was turned into a province and placed apparently under two procurators. The decision was unfortunate; even so direct Roman rule over a sensitive race might have been mitigated by good rulers, but the procurators sent out were little credit to the imperial administration, and their choice reveals the influence that his freedmen could exert over Claudius.

Yet the reason for the decision is not far to seek: it was certainly not hostility to the young Agrippa, for in AD 50 Claudius sent him out to rule Chalcis after his uncle’s death and three years later added to it Philip’s tetrarchy together with Batanaea, Trachonitis and Abilene. It should be remembered that the marriage-alliances offered by King Agrippa often carried with them a request to embrace the Jewish religion in its strictest form including circumcision, and however friendly Claudius might be personally to Agrippa or however ready to see injustices to the Jews righted, he could not view with favour the formation of a block of frontier-kingdoms united both by marriage-ties and religion. He had no wish to see Judaism spreading any farther, just as he had no wish to see Druidism among Roman citizens; his putting-down of Druidism and his expulsion of the Jews from Rome in 49 are all pieces of the same policy.

It should be noted that though some five or six provinces were thus added to the empire equilibrium was not maintained between senatorial and imperial; true, Claudius restored Achaea and Macedonia to the Senate, but the new territories of Mauretania and Britain (to say nothing of Thrace and Judaea) made a vast accession to the area ruled directly by the princeps. Some of the kingdoms remaining were brought into a closer relationship to the princeps by a device which seems to have been an invention of Claudius himself; inscriptions reveal that Cogidubnus in Britain, Cottius in the Alps (who now regained the royal title which had been borne by his father), and Laco dynast of Sparta, were ready to call themselves hgatus or procurator Augusti and so were in effect imperial officials rather than bound by treaty to the Roman People. And though Britain and Lycia were reserved for senators, the two Mauretanias and Judaea and Thrace were to be governed by Equites.

Within the enlarged empire Claudius carried on zealously the improvement of communications, the suppression of brigandage or rioting, and all those duties which fell to the princeps as protector of the State; what those entailed has already been seen under the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius and there is no need to enter into complete detail. Few provinces but bear traces of his road­making, while disorders were punished and put down speedily. A German chief, Gannascus, who was indulging in piratical raids upon the north Gallic coast, was hunted down and killed. In Cilicia the mountain Cietae, after twenty years quiet, revolted again and laid siege to Anemurium, but Antiochus IV, aided by some cavalry sent from Syria, had little difficulty in suppressing them. Some differences among the citizens of Delphi, upon which the proconsul of Achaea, L. Junius Gallio, duly reported were serious enough to need a despatch from Claudius, in which he protests his veneration for Apollo, but the main text is unfortunately missing. The punishment of the Lycians has already been seen; a riot in AD 44 at Rhodes, in which some Roman citizens were crucified, was answered by deprivation of liberty, but the city was too eminent to be degraded for long and when in 53 Nero pleaded its cause before the Senate it regained its freedom.

One city alone presented a lasting problem, Alexandria, with its bi-racial population; embassies from Greeks and Jews were heard by Claudius in his first year, and a late tradition records that Philo was bidden declaim his writings in the Senate-house and that members were amazed—a statement that will surprise no one who has endured to read much of him. Although Claudius confirmed the privileges of the Alexandrian Jews, nine months later came a statesmanlike letter in which he counselled both parties to keep the peace and live at unity within their city; otherwise he would have to show them ‘what the wrath of an aggrieved princeps can be’—no idle threat as the Lycians were to find. For the moment things quietened down so that by April of 42 a dedicator could celebrate the Peace and Concord of Claudius1, but hostility still smouldered below the surface. And the evil was not confined to Alexandria but spread up into Palestine and Syria: Malalas retains a confused tradition of trouble between Greeks and Jews in Antioch at the end df Gaius’ reign, and when in 44 the Jews had to mourn the death of their protector Agrippa the Greeks of Caesarea gleefully poured libations to Charon. The pages of Philo’s invective against Flaccus, Josephus’ controversies with Apion, or the fragments of that strange literature christened by modern scholars ‘ Pagan Acts of the Martyrs ’ (wherein the champions of Alexandrian Hellenism, an Isidorus or Hermaiscus, rebuke the ‘brutality’ of Roman emperors and complain against the domination of the emperor’s councils by ‘godless Jews’) can still give some pale idea of the vehement hatreds these racial enmities inspired, and which caused Rome a natural anxiety.

Government seems to have been equitable save where a freed­man’s avarice or ambition interfered, as in Judaea where the atrocious conduct of Felix was shielded by his brother Pallas. We hear of a governor exiled for taking bribes, of charges of extortion preferred against Statilius Taurus after his tenure of Africa and against C. Cadius Rufus the proconsul of Bithynia. Indeed, Claudius took special care that the guilty should not escape justice, by refusing to give a post to a retiring official until an interval had elapsed in which he could be brought to trial5. Disaster or hardship were substantially relieved: Apamea, badly damaged by an earthquake, had its tribute remitted over five years, and like help was given to the cities of Crete and to Ephesus and Smyrna when they too were shaken6; Byzantium, exhausted by recent wars in Bosporus and Thrace, received a remission for five years; the court physician Xenophon was able to gain immunity for his native island of Cos, and Ilium was granted complete exemption from all burdens in the year 53 when Nero pleaded its cause1. The list could be extended, but there is no need to do so, or gather more proofs that Claudius possessed a deep and genuine sense of the responsibility of the position to which he had been called; it was customary for the newly chosen imperial legates to thank the emperor for the favour vouchsafed them, but Claudius would not have it and took a different view: ‘it is I who should thank them,’ he declared, ‘because they willingly help me in bearing the burden of rule.’ For rule was a burden, and justice difficult because of the wickedness or the lack of interest of mankind, against which he inveighed more than once. But to everything, whether it was a large and comprehensive scheme for lightening both Italy and the provinces of the heavy cost of the imperial postal service, or regulations for the precise date by which senatorial governors—who were sometimes reluctant to leave the capital—should depart for their provinces, he gave the same minute and conscientious attention.

Few of his contemporaries could appreciate this sense of responsibility any more than they could understand his attitude towards citizenship or municipal rights. Yet Claudius was wiser than they. His historical studies had convinced him that Rome owed much to her readiness in former times to incorporate in the citizen body men of merit, and on one of the few occasions when she had obstinately refused she had nearly succumbed to civil war; he realized that Gallic or Spanish or African notables, Greek and Asiatic doctors, scientists and men of letters could all play a useful part in the State. He was sometimes prepared to stretch a point even, as is shown by the famous case of the Anauni, Tulliasses and Sinduni, tribes attributed to the municipality of Tridentum. These tribes, thanks to their bond with Tridentum, had in the course of years usurped the rights of full citizens, and an informer had questioned their status. Claudius, in an edict4, while he recognized the weakness of their claim, nevertheless graciously confirmed to the tribesmen de lure all the rights they had held de facto, and the reasons he gives are interesting: many of the men were serving already in his Praetorian Guard, or were holding a centurion’s post in the legions, or were on the roll of jurors at Rome, and any cancellation would also involve grave injury to the flourishing town of Triden turn itself. It was a wise decision, but one need only compare it with the treatment he meted out to freedmen who had usurped equestrian rank—reducing them to slavery—to discern that what weighed with him on this occasion were considerations of equity and past service, and no mere vague unregulated enthusiasm. Citizenship was a pearl of price, and a Roman citizen must speak the Roman language; he did not hesitate to take it away from a distinguished Greek who had shown that he did not know Latin.

Yet if contemporaries in Rome could not appreciate, the pro­vincials whether in East or West could and did, and numerous inscriptions, as in the time of Tiberius, testify to the regard in which he was held, more especially in the Greek East, where the number of Tiberii Claudii (many of whom owed their citizenship to him) is large and important. In Rome and Italy Claudius would not accept the title Imperator and refused worship as a god; to the Greek East he was Autokrator and Theos naturally and by no constraint. Though at Amastris an imperial official might show an elegant respect for Claudius’ scruples by a dedication ‘pro Pace Augusta et in honorem Tib. Claudii Germanici Augusti,’ in Pisidia, Caria or Lydia he was a god and worshipped as such, and Ephesus celebrated as ‘the marriage of gods’ the union of Claudius and Agrippina. It was their mode of showing gratitude, as they had done to other rulers before, but to few could it have been shown more justly than Claudius.

VI.

CLAUDIUS AS RE-ORGANIZER AND LEGISLATOR

While Tiberius had followed rigidly the instructions of Augustus Claudius was not afraid of innovation. The progressiveness that has been seen in his treatment of the provinces is no less visible at home and in Italy. The Senate slowly begins to lose something of its status as a partner and the princeps gains by the gradual centralization of power into his hands, and by possessing a large and properly organized body of officials through which to administer this power. This re-organization is usually associated with the names of the influential freedmen of Claudius—Narcissus, Pallas, Callistus, Polybius and others—and it is therefore possible to assume that it was due to clever and unscrupulous servants who imposed a scheme of things at once profitable to themselves and gratifying to their vanity upon a weak master, an assumption which can find some support from the literary tradition, which loved to depict the Emperor as the credulous slave of his wives and freedmen, a picture true only of his latest years. Yet apart from the presumption that a ruler is entitled to credit for what his subordinates do well—for the choice of ministers is his—another consideration makes the viewless likely. Thanks to the discoveries of inscriptions and papyri the world of to-day possesses a con­siderable number of documents issued under Claudius’ seal during the years of his Principate, all bearing the stamp of a distinctive style and mode of thought that agrees well with what we know of Claudius and not at all with what we hear of Narcissus or of other freedmen. It is reasonable to infer that the attitude towards imperial problems and the political conceptions revealed in these documents are those of Claudius, and we can feel sure that the will that directed these various measures—here removing burdens, there cancelling inequities, taking a paternal interest in the affairs of his subjects and counselling them to live in concord—was the will of Claudius himself, not that of his freedmen.

The first signs were a re-ordering of the personal staff of the princeps for which the time was overdue. The deaths of Livia or Antonia or Germanicus had added vastly to the imperial private estate, while the confiscated property of such men as Silius or Sejanus (which had been claimed, fairly enough, for the fiscus) and the wholesale robberies of Gaius meant an enormous increase in what may be called the Crown lands; when to all this is added the creation of new provinces, the burden of responsibilities and of routine business devolving on the princeps must have been formidable in its extent. Claudius could not possibly oversee all himself and he took the decisive step of creating special departments of what may be termed a Civil Service, each department being controlled by a freedman—with a staff of other freedmen or slave assistants at his disposal—to deal with the various branches of his duties.

The most influential, though perhaps not the most noticeable, of these new posts was the office of Secretary-General, ab epistulis, held by Narcissus. All correspondence, whether in Greek or Latin, must have been opened, scanned and sorted in his bureau, before being forwarded to the proper department, reports from governors, letters and dispatches from accredited officials, addresses from cities or communities; his knowledge alone made him indispensable and gave him a decisive voice in the deliberations of the princeps. Second only to him stood the Financial Secretary, a rationibus, Pallas. A notable development in Claudius’ reign is the centralization of financial power in the hands of the emperor: inscriptions reveal an imperial procurator controlling the collection of the vicesima hereditatum even in a Senatorial province, and new imperial officials diverted the tax on manumission from the Aerarium to the emperor’s chest. And the evidence, sparse though it is, suggests that out of the various accounting departments one central Treasury-chest was now established, and called the Fiscus. Over this complicated and vast machine the ‘custos principalium opum,’ as Pallas is termed in a magniloquent decree passed in his favour by the Senate, must have presided, and it may be assumed that he also exercised supervision over the procurator of the patrimonium, which now became a separate post. Opportunities for money-making in this sphere must have been extensive, and Pallas acquired an evil renown for wealth and arrogance; but tradition represents Narcissus as the real power behind the throne until the last years when the combination of Agrippina and Pallas proved too strong for him. These two offices were the most important, but there were others: there were the secretary a libellis, whose task it was to deal with all petitions and requests that were offered in person to the princeps, and to which a reply would be given by subscription also the secretary a cognitionibus, whose business it would be to set in order and prepare all correspondence, papers and dossiers relating to the judicial cases brought before the princeps, and his influence must have been all the greater for the lively interest that Claudius displayed in jurisdiction. The exact functions of the secretary a studiis are more doubtful, but it is not improbable that he was responsible for looking after the private library of the princeps, and helped him with references and material for his speeches and edicts. Others too there may have been, but the five here mentioned were outstanding, and their institution can confidently be dated to Claudius’ reign and initiative.

At first glance this may not appear so much. No one would deny that secretaries similar to these had existed before, that we know of secretaries among the slaves and freedmen of Tiberius and that Philo mentions a freedman of Gaius, Homilus by name, whose duty it apparently was to receive letters and petitions. Nevertheless Claudius’ action marks a great advance: separate departments were now first constituted, each with a specialized personnel and definite sphere of activity, which gave the princeps an organization and efficiency superior to anything previously known in Rome, and more significant still, the heads of these departments not only had the power but were slowly in appearance given the status and dignity of public officials. Narcissus was allowed to wear the dagger of military office and to address the soldiers; he was given the ornamenta quaestoria and Pallas the ornamenta praetorian another freedman, Antonius Felix, commanded Roman troops in Judaea, and on another, Harpocras, was conferred the magisterial privilege of giving civic games.

A further step was taken in 53, when Claudius persuaded the Senate to grant to the imperial procurators in the provinces the right of jurisdiction: hitherto any contested claim of the fiscus would naturally have come before the senatorial or imperial governor for his decision; henceforward the procurators were competent in this sphere. The measure was presumably designed to increase efficiency by expediting the collection of monies due, but even though the competence of the procurators was limited to financial cases, it established an independent authority in the province, who was not prepared to truckle to the governor, and might easily overstep the not very clearly defined limits of his power. In the reign of Nero the imperial governor of Galatia and the procurator of an imperial domain at Tymbrianassus are found acting as equals in deciding a boundary question between Sagalassus and the domain. Slowly there was beginning to grow up a new nobility beside the senatorial aristocracy. Though there existed senators who would accept office under the princeps or co-operate with him others were too proud or too timid, and in addition Claudius had not, during his early years, moved sufficiently in senatorial society to have a large number of friends there upon whom he could rely. Naturally enough he fell back on knights or freedmen and those who had been his associates during the days of his obscurity; they were not too proud to hold unimportant offices at first and could be advanced by their own competency. He re-organized the cursus honorum of the equestrian order (though his reorganization was not lasting), and was prepared to promote to its ranks men even of Greek or Asiatic birth; thus Xenophon, the court physician and his brother Tiberius Claudius Cleonymus both held centurionates in Roman legions. As the monarchies of sixteenth-century France or England in breaking loose from the feudal nobility and moving towards centralized power found their best instruments in a class distinct from the old nobility, so did the Principate.

Still all this was a development within the princeps' own province: far more momentous therefore was the gradual appropriation by Claudius of powers which till now had fallen within the sphere of the Senate. The old quaestores classici had outlived their usefulness; the two surviving ones were now abolished, for the Prefects of the fleets at Misenum and Ravenna could attend to their duties3, and the Ostian quaestor was replaced by an imperial procurator of the new harbour (procurator portus Ostiensis) which occurred just after Gaius’ death, determined to safeguard the supply and storage, and, more significant still, to make the cost a charge on the fiscus. Compensation for damage from storm was offered to transporters, bounties and privileges to ship-builders, and some three miles north of Ostia extensive harbour-works were begun, to protect shipping, and new granaries were built. In the capital, the imperial praejectus annonae, with a staff of freedman procurators, presided over the supply and accounting, though the distribution was apparently still managed by the senatorial praefectus frumenti dandi. Other departments, too, the Princeps took into his charge. The care of the roads and streets in Rome was transferred from the quaestors to imperial officials and the cost placed on the fiscus. Aqueducts had been so far controlled by a consular curator aquarum with senatorial assistants; when Claudius constructed his new aqueducts—the Anio Novus and Aqua Claudia, works of his censorship—he also added a freedman procurator with a staff of slaves to look after them, and this item too was presumably charged to the fiscus. To connect the imperial harbour near Ostia with the Tiber a new channel was dug, which helped also to lessen the risks of flooding, and henceforward the five members of the Board of Curators of the Tiber held office ‘ex auctoritate principis.’ The Senate was losing its power even over those departments which had been left to it by Augustus in Italy and which had so far been regarded as peculiarly its own.

In yet other ways Claudius encroached on the authority of the Senate. Since 23 BC the management of the Aerarium Saturni had lain with two praetors selected by lot; its accounts were apparently in some disorder, and so in 42 Claudius had three ex­praetors appointed, with imperium, to collect all debts owing to it; two years later, when order had presumably been re-established, he made an apparent return to older tradition by restoring the supervision to two quaestors. It may have looked like compensation for the abolition of the quaestorial provinces, but these quaestors were not chosen by lot, as of old, but were nominated by the princeps to hold office for three years, and in effect the old Republican treasury was now controlled by imperial officials. If Dio’s statement could be trusted, on some occasions Claudius actually nominated governors for the senatorial provinces, but the only attested instance is that of Galba in Africa from 44 to 46, and this was presumably an appointment for a special purpose, like the recommendation of M. Lepidus and Junius Blaesus by Tiberius in AD. 20, and it may be equally inferred that Claudius presented the name of Galba to the Senate.

This being so, it is not surprising that the princeps began to take control to some extent of the Senate. Attendance at meetings was strictly enforced and absenteeism punished; the debates ought to be serious and real, not merely a matter of formal assent. Claudius therefore took over the right to grant leave of absence to senators, by a decree of the Senate itself, though members were free to visit their estates in Sicily, and in Narbonese Gaul after 49, without such permission1. His tenure of the censorship in 47/48 gave him an opportunity to revise the list thoroughly, to cast out unsuitable members and bring in men of standing even from the provinces, for he meant the Senate to be worthy of its high position and to include in it the best brains of the empire. Men might be helped in their official career by the grant of honorary rank, and by this fictitious service could advance more rapidly. But he had no intention of superseding the Senate or of making himself absolute master of it; he only held the censorship once and for the traditional eighteen months, not continuously as Domitian was to do, and he did not unduly influence the Senate’s composition. Indeed he preferred to use its prestige for many of his enactments, and the number of senatus consulta passed during his reign is considerable. Since the majority of them were inspired by Claudius it is fitting to review his legislative activity here.

Many elements can be noted that seem at first curiously juxtaposed—an interest in law and the courts, an eagerness to put down abuses, a paternalist spirit and common-sense practicality. But they are all component parts in a character that had a natural bent for tidiness and good order and was not afraid of reform. It is typical of his strong practicality that he abolished the custom that had grown up in the Senate of reciting at the start of each year certain speeches of Augustus and Tiberius, and suppressed many holidays and festivals in order to save time and expedite business, especially in the courts. For jurisdiction was a passion with him: he was accused of spending too much time in the courts and supervising everything, but it may be conjectured that after four years of Gaius the administration of law had not improved. Men could not tell what the new emperor would be like; it had become terribly easy for informers to bring malicious or trivial charges, which no praetor would dare dismiss for fear of wrath from above; a man accused might easily find himself in a prejudiced position, and Claudius announced publicly his determination to break ‘the tyranny of the accusers.’ There can be no doubt that many abuses in the judicial system were put straight. Time­wasting tactics got short shrift: as defendants, fearing an adverse verdict, were apt either not to appear or else to send excuses, he gave warning that he would decide against all absentees after a stated interval; if the jurors could not come to a decision in the proper time, he suggested roundly that they would have to sit during the vacation; while if a prosecutor put in a charge and then left it pending, the praetor was now empowered to cite him—after the expiry of the period allowed for collecting evidence—and (if he did not then appear or offer reasonable excuse) to pronounce him guilty of calumnia, which would involve the deprivation of civil rights.

Certain minor reforms attest his care: in order to fill up the roll of the five decuries, Claudius lowered the age limit to 24 years, though he retained the former limit of 25 for the court of the recuperatores and for more serious cases. The huge fees paid to advocates had become a scandal; he realized that to re-enact the hoary Lex Cincia (invoked by traditionalists) would be absurd and impracticable, but he persuaded the Senate to set some legal bounds to the amount payable. But while he speeded up procedure and cleared away much lumber by this work he had no wish to abolish good old customs: he praised and recommended to defendants the traditional practice of wearing mourning to excite sympathy, which appears to have been dying out. Though the sources are apt to dwell on the ludicrous side of Claudius’jurisdiction, he certainly used his influence—even sometimes beyond the law—in favour of equity; punishments were altered in accordance with the merits of the case, and those who had been non-suited through some technicality, as, for example, by demanding more than the precise sum allowed, had their actions restored.

In estimating the achievement of Claudius in law-giving it is convenient to consider it as a whole without distinguishing the means employed, whether through the mouthpiece of the Senate or by edict or even by an occasional lex lata. Some of the measures passed belong more perhaps to the history of Roman law and need but brief mention here: such are the transference from praetors to consuls of the nomination of guardians for those not in sua potestate, and the extension to governors in the provinces of the power to adjudicate on fideicommissa, while in Rome itself the consuls, whose duty it had been, were relieved of an unnecessarily heavy burden by shifting the minor cases to two praetors appointed by the princeps. Other laws were designed to buttress the structure of society and to preserve the distinctions between grades; Claudius made clear his own attitude by the punishment meted out to freedmen who had usurped equestrian census—and there were many such—whom he ordered to be sold into slavery, as he also did to those who failed to show the proper obsequium to their former masters; two senatus consulta passed before 47 emphasized the close dependence of a freed slave upon his patron. One, the S.C. Largianum of 42, assigned the property of a dead Junian Latin in the first place to the manumitter, and in the second to such of his children as had not been individually disinherited, and finally to his external heirs; the other, the S.C. Ostorianum, declared that if a patron specifically assigned a freed­man to one of his sons, that son must count as his patron, but that in the event of his death the freedman would then come under the patronage of the remaining children of the manumitter. Later, towards the end of his reign and on the prompting of Pallas, Claudius strove to combat the contamination of free by slave blood through a senatus consultum which laid down that a free woman who deliberately entered into concubinage with a slave belonging to another owner, if against the owner’s express will, should herself become his slave, while if he consented, though she retained her free status any child of hers would be a slave.

Herein Claudius was the upholder of the Augustan hierarchical system of society and of its rigorous enforcement; in other enactments we can trace a spirit, at its worst paternalist, at its best humane and liberal. He himself always refused to accept legacies to the injury or exclusion of natural heirs, and where a man had been condemned and confiscation of goods followed he insisted that the son’s peculium should be respected. An early edict of his forbade wives to become surety for their husbands and this principle was extended generally (in the 9. C. Vellaeanum of AD 46) so as to prevent a woman becoming surety for any man; such a law might be justified on various grounds, but it is noteworthy that Ulpian regards it as intended to protect women from victimiza­tion, ‘since owing to the weakness of their sex they are exposed to many such perils,’ and its protection was not afforded to those women who meant to act fraudulently, alike intention may perhaps be seen too in the law which freed women from the restriction of agnate guardianship. Some relief was given to the operations of the Lex Papia Poppaea by modifying a clause that had been added under Tiberius; henceforward if a man over sixty married, provided that his wife was under fifty, both would escape penalties. Ironical critics have amused themselves by suggesting that the occasion for the modification may have been Claudius’ own marriage to Agrippina, but as Claudius was not sixty at the time and as the hardships of the law had already caused trouble this clause may well have been mitigated earlier in the reign. A like humanity may be seen in a law passed in 47 which forbade money-lenders to make advances of money to a young man against his father’s death, and still more in an edict issued by Claudius as censor: masters had been accustomed to expose sick slaves in a temple of Aesculapius on an island in the Tiber and so leave them till recovery or death; Claudius decreed that if a slave, thus exposed, recovered he should be a free man, and that if a master, wishing to evade this ruling, killed him to save further expense, he should be put on trial as a murderer. In this care for slaves and weaklings, as in many other of his views, he was in advance of his time and looks forward to the days of Hadrian or the Antonines, who re-enacted or carried further principles that he had laid down. No better compliment could be paid.

Other measures still attest his care for antiquity or for tradition or for the old Roman religion. The art of haruspicina which had played so great a part in Roman history was in danger of dying out; Claudius bewailed the lack of interest in such good institutions, and the Senate ordered the college of pontifices to take such steps as they deemed needful for its preservation. On the other hand astrologers and soothsayers, who had crowded back again to the capital, were once more banished, following the trial of Furius Scribonianus in 52. But the religious policy of the Emperor is described elsewhere; it will be enough to remark that for all his scholarly conservatism, as in other matters, so here he was no foe to innovations that could plead merit.

One other piece of legislation remains to be discussed, for its full purpose is not usually understood. A senatus consultum was passed in the early years of the reign (the S.C. Hosidianum) imposing a heavy penalty on those who should buy houses or buildings for the purpose of making a profit by their demolition, and declaring all such sales to be invalid. In the preamble, which refers plainly to the oncoming Ludi Saeculares, is contained a tirade against those who indulge in so destructive a form of money-making and spread ravages as of war in a peaceful country. It is not unusual to find in municipal charters clauses forbidding an owner (without the previous consent of the decurions) to pull down property unless he gives a pledge to rebuild or restore: what excites curiosity here is the size of the fine to be paid by delinquents—double the purchase price—and the fierceness of the denunciation of the practice, and the natural question also arises how a man could hope (save in an exceptional case) to make much profit by demolition and sale of materials. The answer is to be sought in the history of Italian agriculture during the two past generations. Tiberius had pointed out to an audience in the Senate how little Italy produced of its own food-supply, and though he had done much to alleviate the financial and agrarian crisis of 33, the inevitable result of that crisis had been to bring still more land into the hands of wealthy creditors, who had no desire to live on their new estates or indeed to live as farmers at all but preferred to dismantle and pull down existing buildings and turn farms to grazing-land. It is against this class of speculator and absentee landlord that the severity of the law is directed, for it will be observed that it exempts specifically from penalty all who are prepared to settle on their estates (rerum suarum possessores futurr) and work for their improvement.

The evil was old indeed, but Claudius was doing what he could. Another example of his anxiety about agriculture may be seen in what is commonly regarded merely as a spectacular feat of engineering, the draining of the Fucine Lake in the Marsian Hills. The fluctuations in its level and the unhealthiness of its marshes  endangered the safety of the dwellers around and any land reclaimed could be put to profitable use, for private companies had offered to attempt the work provided they were allowed the land in freehold. During eleven years some 30,000 men were employed in tunnelling for over three miles through the limestone of Monte Salviano, and the opening was celebrated by an elaborate spectacle to which people flocked from miles around. More important, however, was the fact that some hundreds of acres of land were reclaimed for cultivation, upon which possessors could and did settle. In this care for agriculture Claudius was at one with the opinion of his day; the philosopher Musonius Rufus preached a return to the land, declaring that the working of a farm was no hindrance to a philosopher, and might even be an incentive and example to his pupils of the life of strenuous endeavour. That the draining of the lake was not more effective and beneficial was imputed to the avarice of Narcissus; the tunnel was apt to get blocked and need clearing, and Italian farming did not benefit to the extent it might have.

But the comparative failure of the enterprise had another and an unexpected result. Agrippina seized the opportunity to accuse Narcissus to her husband, and Narcissus hit back; the latent antagonism between the two broke out openly and Agrippina saw with dismay that Nero might yet be disappointed of the succession by a repentant Claudius. The time had come to act. Once Agrippina’s mind was made up the rest was easy. To secure her own safety and the succession of Nero she decided to murder Claudius. Against her she had Narcissus, but Pallas was on her side; Seneca and Burrus would support her from gratitude if nothing else, and though they were of provincial birth they commanded respect in Roman circles. Narcissus left Rome in the autumn of 54 to take a cure at Sinuessa and Agrippina had her chance. She poisoned her husband with a dish of mushrooms, and to make assurance doubly sure called in the physician Xenophon to administer the coup de grace. She could not at once proceed with the proclamation of her son, for her astrologers warned her the hour was not yet propitious, so the news of Claudius’ death was kept back: but Burrus was given his instructions and Seneca busied himself with Nero’s inaugural speeches.

VII.

THE GOOD AND EVIL OF THE REIGN

Thus after a reign of a little less than fourteen years Claudius vanished from the scene. The preceding sections have described his various activities, and now some final estimate must be attempted. In the provinces there were many to remember him gratefully, in Rome fewer, yet in spite of the executions that stained his Principate he was not the victim of any revulsion of feeling such as followed Tiberius or Gaius, his memory was not condemned, and he was the first of the successors of Augustus to be given the honour of deification. The really unpopular parts of his rule are easily discerned from Nero’s opening programme to the Senate: what men had objected to was Claudius’ absorption in the courts, the abuse of trials intra cubiculum principis, the power of the freed­men, and the gradual encroachment upon the rights of the Senate; all this the young ruler promised he would renounce1.

It was the Senate in fact which most had felt itself in danger from Claudius, but what that meant must be carefully defined. Claudius had no idea of dispossessing the Senate or of antiquating it, like Gaius; his historical sense was too keen. But he did intend the Senate to take its duties seriously and to share his views as to the responsibilities of a ruling class. Some were prepared to co-operate with him—there was no lack of willing governors for the provinces—but if they were not they must make room for those whom the Princeps knew to be more able or more conscientious or better fitted. On some of the Senate’s functions in Italy he undoubtedly did encroach, but the great bulk of its duties was left unharmed, and he did all he could to safeguard its prestige and high position and to recall the more inert to a realization of these. ‘If these proposals,’ he said, in recommending some judicial reforms, ‘are approved by you, show your assent at once plainly and sincerely. If, however, you do not approve them then find some other remedies, but here in this temple now, or if you wish to take a longer time for consideration, take it, so long as you recollect that wherever you meet you should produce an opinion of your own. For it is extremely unfitting, Conscript Fathers, to the high dignity of this order that at this meeting one man only, the consul designate, should make a speech (and that copied exactly from the proposal of the consuls), while the rest utter one word only, “Agreed,” and then after leaving the House remark “There, we’ve given our opinion”.’ This was the lesson that Claudius would have the Senate learn, but earnest though he was he could impart it with a touch of humour that lightened it, and these are not the words of a master who holds the whip-hand, but of one reasoning with equals.

Indeed, as senators these nobles had nothing to fear from Claudius; what was dangerous was to be rich or popular with the army or a descendant of the divine Augustus. Riches attracted the greed and envy of the freedmen or wives of Claudius; and if in addition the victim possessed a famous name, or the loyalty of the legions, or claimed descent from Augustus, then the simplest way to incriminate him was to suggest that he was a conspirator or possible rebel and have the case heard in secrecy. There was little likelihood of pardon from an emperor whose timidity or superstition was only too easily excited, who was well aware of his own bodily infirmities and remembered that his predecessor had been assassinated. But this does not prove that the Senate was useless or abject: there were no heroics from a Thrasea Paetus, because there was no call for them; there was plenty of honest discussion. Nor was it as servile as is sometimes supposed. Even in the days when Agrippina’s power was high she could not save one of her agents (Tarquitius Priscus, who had successfully attacked Statilius Taurus for her) from ignominious expulsion. The Senate could still be a partner as Augustus had wished.

But though Claudius could look to the Senate to supply him with governors and generals—an Aulus Plautius or a Didius Gallus—and confidential advisers such as L. Vitellius (in whose charge he left the empire during his journey to and from Britain), for his personal assistants he turned mostly to the equites. Though there were incompetents, a man such as L. Julius Vestinus, who carried out important duties with skill and tact, could win his praise as an ‘ornament of the equestrian order,’ and into this order he was ready to promote freedmen of tried merit or centurions of good service, such as the Baebius Atticus who governed  Noricum as procurator at the crown of his career. On this order a princeps was bound to rely ultimately for the bulk of his higher civil servants, and a generation later we find Vitellius choosing his chief secretaries from it rather than from the unpopular freedmen. And there is evidence that Claudius was prepared to bestow knighthood and important office upon Greeks or Jews or men of non-Roman extraction from the Eastern provinces; the instances of Xenophon and his brother Cleonymus have already been noticed, Tiberius Julius Alexander was chosen to govern Judaea and under Nero gave honourable service in Egypt, and these were not the only able non-Romans to win honour and a career from the emperor. For the equestrian order therefore privileges were carefully guarded, and in his censorship, on the accusation of Flavius Proculus, Claudius punished with enslavement some four hundred men who had usurped these privileges.

Such was his attitude to the two great orders of Roman society; what he did for the more efficient government of the Empire and towards the gradual equalization of the provincials with Romans has already been discussed. His treatment of the provinces arose out of no mere amiability but from a very real sense of the continuity of the Roman historical process, a process that owed its impulse to the wise admission of precedent: ‘ilia potius cogitetis,’ was his reply to possible objectors, ‘quam multa in hac civitate novata sint.’ He used the past not as so many do as a contrast or as an objection to the future but as a justification and encouragement for still bolder measures.

Were this the whole story Claudius would unhesitatingly be entitled to a place among the greater rulers of Rome, but it is not. Inevitably, with the new efficient secretariate and with increased centralization, the Principate began to draw near to the outward form of a monarchy; the princeps and his family were becoming a royal family, raised above the citizens and protected by body­guards, his house a palace with courtiers, ceremonial and intrigues. The wife of the princeps begins to assume an importance that would have scandalized Augustus or Tiberius: magistrates celebrated the birthday of Messallina and offered vows for her, and at the British triumph she was allowed to follow her husband’s chariot in a carpentum, a carriage reserved for Vestal Virgins and priests on solemn occasions. Agrippina was still more exalted; men had spoken jeeringly of Messallina as a queen, but she nearly turned the gibe into earnest; at public spectacles, even at military parades, she would appear gorgeously robed by the side of Claudius, the privilege of using the carpentum and the title Augusta were conferred upon her in 50, and Colonia Agrippinensis (Cologne) was named in her honour. The Princeps Iuventutis, Nero, like some young Hellenistic prince, was given the head of the Alexandrian Museum, Chaeremon the Stoic, for his tutor in Greek, and the most famous literary man of his day, Seneca, for his instructor in things Roman.

Nor was this all. While this development was contrary to Roman tradition and sentiment and to Augustus’ intentions, there were men happy enough to forward a process which proved profitable to themselves. While smaller fry like Suillius Rufus or Tarquitius Priscus grew rich on accusations, greater men such as Seneca or Vitellius adapted themselves to furthering their rulers’ purposes. When Messallina coveted the gardens of Valerius Asiaticus it was on Vitellius’ eloquence that she relied to secure condemnation, and when Agrippina wished to break the betrothal between Junius Silanus and Octavia—so that she could be married to Nero—who but the faithful Vitellius could be found to inform Claudius of the distressing rumour that Silanus had committed incest with his sister, Junia Calvina? Thanks to such courtiers and their fellows the language of a divine monarchy was beginning to make headway and phrases Tiberius had deprecated were now freely applied. Men could speak of the majesty of the ruler (tanta maiestas duds), of Claudius’ sacred hands or sacred duties, Scribonius Largus writes openly of ‘our god Caesar.’ The fulsome tone of the senatus consultum passed in honour of Pallas, which the younger Pliny reproduces with a commentary of indignant interjections, reveals to what a depth flattery of the freedmen could sink. For these court officials, despised and hated, were also to be feared and propitiated and liked to abase the pride of a Roman: ‘I have seen,’ writes Seneca, ‘the former master of Callistus stand before his door and be refused admittance while others passed in,’ and Seneca himself from his exile in Corsica courted the goodwill of Polybius in language that pains his admirers.

But the most serious evil of Claudius’ Principate was the power that he unwittingly surrendered to his wives and freedmen of enriching themselves by the sale of offices, immunities or grants of citizenship, or by the more brutal methods of confiscation and murder; the number of the victims, senators and knights, dwelt long in the memory of the Roman nobility. Our sources depict, therefore, an emperor weak, absent-minded, and deaf, prematurely aged through a long series of illnesses and by bouts of self-indulgence and gluttony, falling more and more under the domination of wills stronger than his own—a picture which the history of his last three or four years at home and abroad tends to confirm. It is true, but it is not the whole truth. Here as always the difference between Rome and the provinces must be borne in mind. In the edicts and letters that have survived we can judge for ourselves another aspect of Claudius, and the judgment must be favourable. Apart altogether from their content, the importance of which has been discussed above, in every one of them—whether he is counselling the Jews to show for others’ religion something of the respect he does for theirs, or reminding senators what is due from their position, or confirming the disputed rights of the Anauni, even if it is merely a plain letter of acknowledgment to the guild of Dionysiac artists in Miletus— there is always present something strongly individual, revealing a nature sometimes pedantic or digressive, but kindly and understanding, not lacking in sense of humour, eager to promote order and justice, and genuinely anxious for the well-being of the ruled. His readiness to grant citizenship, to bring provincials into the Senate, and to found colonies, smacks of Caesar rather than of Augustus, but two generations had passed since the battle of Actium and he could attempt things that Augustus dared not. The good that he did endured and developed into the heritage of the empire, the evil was soon forgotten with Nero and civil wars following, the grotesque figure no longer seen. This was the ruler whom Agrippina killed to set her son upon the throne, herself to fall among his early victims.

CHAPTER XXI

NERO