Claudius I.

Claudius I., Roman emperor, whose full name was Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, was the younger son of Drusus, brother of the Emperor Tiberius and Antonia, and was born at Lyons in Gaul, 10 B.C. He was naturally sickly and infirm, and his education was neglected, or left to be cared for by women and freedmen. His supposed imbecility saved him from the cruelty of Caligula; but Claudius, in his privacy, had made considerable progress in the study of history, and wrote in Latin and Greek several extensive works now lost. After the assassination of Caligula, he was found by the soldiers in a corner of the palace, where, in dread, he had concealed himself. The praetorians carried him forth, proclaimed him emperor, and compelled his recognition by the senate and many citizens who had hoped to restore the republic. By giving largess to the troops who had raised him to the throne, Claudius commenced the baneful practice which subjected Rome to a military despotism under the succeeding emperors. The first acts of his reign seemed to give promise of mild and just government, but in the year 42, when a conspiracy against his life was detected, his timidity led him to yield himself entirely to the guidance of his third and most infamous wife, Messalina, who, in concert with the freedmen Pallas and Narcissus, practised cruelties and extortions without restraint. The emperor meanwhile lived in retirement, partly occupied in his studies, and expended enormous sums in building, especially in the famous Claudian Aqueduct (Aqua Claudia). At the same time he ruled well though mildly, and carried out the enlightened policy of extending citizenship to the provincials. Abroad his arms were victorious. Mauritania was made a Roman province, the conquest of Britain was commenced, and the frontier provinces in the east were settled. At home the uxorious emperor continued to be governed by his wives. Tacitus tells us that the shameless Messalina, after abusing her blind and doting husband by a series of the vilest profligacies, went so far as to marry herself publicly to a young lover, on which the emperor, at last awakened to her wickedness and his own shame, put her to death. He next married his own niece, the equally vicious and more cruel Agrippina, who procured his death by poison (54 A.D.) in order to secure the succession of Nero, her own son by an earlier husband.