to all, but also what may have lain beneath the surface; whether not only this tame submission to every kind of insult, but even some studied exaggeration of his natural weakness and eccentricity, may not have been assumed for self-protection', as according to the old tale was the demeanour of Brutus under Tarquinius, or as had been the servility of Gaius himself under Tiberius 2. It can, indeed, be hardly doubted that his position had another side to it, at a time when all thinking men could foresee that the existing tyranny must needs be shortlived; that its outcome would not be (as some fondly dreamt) a return to the old Republic, but the succession of some other princeps; that while direct or collateral descendants of Augustus lived, their names would weigh powerfully in the scale against any others; and that within that circle Claudius, with all his drawbacks, was most prominent 3.

It was not without political foresight that the freedman Callistus chose to pay court to Claudius rather than destroy him; that his old friend Herodes Agrippa still kept up his intimacy; that the senate as a body paid him what was evidently intended as a compliment by choosing him on the deputation above referred to. Nor can we suppose him to have been himself so obtuse as not to keep an eye on his own prospects throughout his apparent effacement; nor was it without a political motive that he contracted during this period a far higher matrimonial alliance than any of his previous ones, by taking to wife Valeria Messalina, who was a direct descendant, through both her parents, from Octavia 7, and might have added to the chance of any of his possible rivals by a similar connection.

It is also easy to see that in his actual elevation to the principate deeper causes were working than a mere soldier's freak, however true may be the account which has come down to us of the circumstances of the moment when a sudden and terrible catastrophe brought him

thing. This too is a Germanicus,' is the expression ascribed by Josephus (Ant. 19. 3, 1) to the soldier who found him hiding. The names of other descendants of Augustus or Octavia then living will be seen from the pedigrees in Introd. i. ix. pp. 139, 140.

4 Jos. Ant. 19. I, 10.

5 He had been brought up with him in early youth (Jos. Ant. 18. 6, 4), and had evidently still the position of a trusted friend when he acted as negotiator between him and the senate after the death of Gaius (Id. 19. 4).

unawares in full view of the end for which he and his adherents may have been none the less deliberately laying their plans.

Our most serious loss is that of the record and judgment of Tacitus respecting the first and best years of this principate, one which we can the better realise by reflecting how much less we should have known of the rule of Tiberius, if the first three Books of the Annals had not come down to us. As regards mere material, it is no doubt true that our other authorities here do more to fill the gap. Josephus, by large portions of his narrative, and especially by the original texts of edicts of the emperor and of Petronius, his legatus in Syria, preserved in it, has given us valuable information on many subjects, especially on the policy adopted towards the Jewish race': a few facts of historical interest may be found among those noted by the elder Pliny; to his nephew we owe the touching history of Paetus and Arria"; and the reader may derive entertainment, if not instruction, from Seneca, whose disregard, not only for truth, but even for his own consistency, allows us to find, in what he says of Claudius, an equally extreme instance of each of the kinds of falsification, in which Tacitus tells us that the histories of the whole period covered by his Annals abounded3. In the 'Consolatio' addressed from his place of exile to Polybius, the resources of language can hardly find terms for the gentleness and clemency of the prince under whom it was the freedman's happy lot to live; and under whom even exiles rested in peace. Fortune is prayed to preserve one granted to the relief of a worn-out age, and herself bidden to learn from him to be merciful". He is himself imagined as drawing on the unrivalled stores of his eloquence and learning to address topics of consolation to his minister; whom the writer bids to seek his own solace in the sunshine of that presence, of that deity within whose influence no sorrow can reach him 10. It is hard indeed to believe that we are reading from the same author whose pen has described a monster of cruelty to us in the 'Ludus.' Some allowance must be made for the difference in date of the two pictures 11;

5

1 It is also to Josephus that we owe the only account given with full detail of the death of Gaius and elevation of Claudius (Ant. 19. 1-4). For the edicts above referred to, see below, p. 29.

2 Ep. 3. 16; see also Mart. I. 14. Tacitus, who alludes to the story in 16. 34, 3, no doubt gave it full prominence in its place, and it is probably from him that the abridged version in Dio, 60. 16, 6 was derived.

3 Florentibus ipsis ob metum falsae,

for the rest, the servile flattery and scathing satire must be left to counterbalance and discredit each other.

Our only continuous and consecutive narrative, that of Dio, shrinks into the epitome of Xiphilinus at a point a little before that at which we recover the guidance of Tacitus, and is, unfortunately, somewhat meagre as a whole in proportion to the general scale of the history1; but on many important points, especially on the conquest of Britain, is our sole detailed authority.

From these sources, aided by the miscellaneous 'farrago' of Suetonius, our record of the first six years of this prince's rule has to be gathered 2, so far as it is needful for the present purpose to trace its outlines.

It must be borne in mind that Claudius and his advisers, while thus taking the reins at a moment's notice, succeeded to no such wellordered empire as had been transmitted by Augustus to Tiberius and by him to Gaius, but to one full of confusion and misgovernment. The bloody deed of Jan. 24 had revived the memory of the Ides of March of B.C. 44, and had shaken the foundations of Caesarism; the threads of continuity had been snapped, the State had been two days without a princeps, and the restoration of the Republic had been debated as an open question 3. The executions and extortions of the late tyranny had thoroughly alienated the rich, while the populace, though probably fortunate enough to be ignorant of their peril, and deploring the loss of what must have seemed a golden age of amusements, were in imminent danger of all the horrors of famine. Abroad, Gaius had unsettled everything and settled nothing; had pillaged Gaul, stirred up the long slumbering hostility of the German tribes, driven Palestine into open rebellion, flouted the deputation sent to plead for the persecuted Jews of Alexandria, had created or deposed vassal princes at the humour of his caprice, and, by the murder or detention of their legitimate rulers,

tise, the hands of this 'mitissimus princeps' were already stained with the blood of Silanus (see on II. 29, 1), and with all the severities consequent on the detection of the conspiracy of Camillus Scribonianus. Each treatise was written only for the purpose of the moment, the former to procure the writer's return from exile, the latter to amuse Nero and his friends at the Saturnalia immediately following his

accession.

1 To the narrative of these thirteen years one Book is allotted. An equal space is given to the short rule of Gaius, while with that of Nero three whole Books are occupied.

2 Such further evidence as can be gathered from coins and inscriptions has been carefully collected by Lehmann (App. pp. 1-66).

See Jos. Ant. 19. 1-3.

The popular indignation at the death of Gaius is described in Jos. 1. 1.; 19. I, 20, etc.

Seneca (de Brev. Vit. 18, 5), who traces the cause to the withdrawal of cornships to make the useless bridge across the bay of Baiae, states (probably with exaggeration) that only corn enough for seven or eight days was left in Rome. Dio (59. 17, 2) represents the famine as already felt.

See Dio, 59. 21, 2; 22, 3, etc.

had left Mauretania a prey to war, Commagene to anarchy, and had abandoned the great kingdom of Armenia to the control of Parthia 1. The difficulties of this situation were dealt with by the new government in a spirit of deliberation and forethought hardly to be expected of persons taken unawares. The most urgent danger, that of famine, appears to have been averted for the present by energetic temporary measures 2, and was to be lessened in future by great improvements projected in the harbourage of Ostia. Another necessary of life was to be provided in abundance by taking up vigorously and carrying out to its accomplishment the aqueduct begun by Gaius. Another great work, undertaken at an early date, the tunnel from Lake Fucinus to the Liris, appears to have had some relation to the food supply; but it is difficult to see what result commensurate with the enormous cost could ever have been expected.

Another question pressing for immediate decision was that of those compromised in the recent conspiracy. Tyrannicide could not be tolerated, and therefore the actual assassins had to die; but of the rest, even those who had been talked of as aspirants to the principate, or who had advocated the restoration of the Republic, were included in a comprehensive amnesty, and even allowed to win further distinctions; a similar pardon being also extended to those who had heaped insults. on Claudius at his nephew's bidding".

The emperor had also to define the rule to which he had succeeded; and in this it is hardly too much to say that the lines of the imperial constitution had to be retraced. The memory of the late tyranny was effaced, the insane titles adopted by Gaius were abolished, his 'acta'

1 On all these points, see further explanation below (pp. 29, foll.).

2 Those mentioned in Suet. 18, appear to belong to a later date; but some of the coins referred to by Lehmann (p. 135) bearing the words 'Ceres Augusta,' the 'modius,' etc., appear to belong to this first year and to refer to measures then taken.

3 See Suet. 20. Dio (60. 11) places the beginning of this work in his second year (also one of dearth). In spite of all that was done, Rome was again threatened with imminent famine in 804, A. D. 51 (12. 43, 2); and Puteoli seems still to have remained the great landingplace of the Alexandrian fleet (Sen. Ep. 77, 1). That the work was unfinished at his death would appear from medals in which Nero credits himself with it (Port. Ost. Augusti'): see Eckh. vi.

276; Cohen, i. 280, 33. The port of Ostia seems still to have been insecure (see 15. 18, 3).

This work was probably not immediately taken up. It is mentioned by Tacitus as if completed in 800, A. D. 47, but the inscription (see note on 11. 13, 2) gives a later date.

5 The statement of Suet. (Cl. 20), that the work took eleven years, would show it to have been begun in the first year of Claudius: see 12, 56, 1, and note. See note (1. 1.). 7 Dio, 60. 3, 4-7: Valerius Asiaticus, who had glorified the assassination (Jos. Ant. 19. 1, 20), and appears to have aspired to the principate (Id. 4, 3), was allowed afterwards to take part in the expedition to Britain and to hold a second consulship (see II. I, 1; 3, 1).

rescinded, his exiles, especially his two sisters Agrippina and Julia, recalled, many of his extortions and confiscations restored to the sufferers or their heirs, his statues were silently removed, his debased coinage was called in1.

In name and form, the Augustan idea of a citizen prince was to be restored. The most sacred oath of Claudius was 'per Augustum "'; and, to associate himself with a divine ancestry, he procured for his grandmother Livia a tardy deification, with special honours to keep up her name. Further respect was shown to the memory of his still popular brother Germanicus, his father Drusus, his mother Antonia; and even her father M. Antonius was honourably mentioned. By thus prominently bringing into notice his relationships to the previous ruling house, and by himself assuming the cognomen Caesar,' he would endeavour to sustain the fiction of a continuity of succession; though his name was still significant of a change; the house of the Julii Caesares, to which Augustus and his successors had nominally and by adoption yet belonged, having been left without any male representative at the death of Gaius, while no such family as the 'Claudii Caesares' had ever existed, and the name would seem to an antiquarian genealogist a strange misnomer. From this time, therefore, it was distinctly to be understood that 'Caesar' had passed from a family name to an imperial title.

The Claudian name was sufficiently near to the Julian to prevent the few remaining great houses from feeling degraded by its exaltation, and some of the most prominent were conciliated by politic alliances. The infant Octavia, whose name recalled the sister of Augustus (her ancestress in a threefold line), was promised in marriage to L. Junius Silanus, the great-great-grandson of Augustus', while Antonia, the emperor's daughter by Paetina, was betrothed to Cn. Pompeius Magnus, a representative not only of that famous name, but also of the Calpurnii Pisones, the Licinii Crassi, and Scribonia.

Besides thus winning the support of great families, he conciliates the senate as a whole by the deference paid to its authority. It was to be

1 For these and other similar measures, see Dio, 60. 4, 6, &c.; Suet. Cl. 11.

2 Suet. Cl. II.

3 Dio, 60. 5, 2.

Dio, 60. 5, I; Suet. Cl. 11.

For the descent of Octavia and of Silanus, see Introd. i. ix. pp. 139, 141.

He is named in Suet. Cl. 27; Dio, 60. 5, 7; in Sen. Lud. 11, 5, he is called 'Crassi filius.' On his tomb, recently discovered near the Porta Salara, he is styled Cn. Pomp., Crassi f., Men(enia