Claudius: From Idiot to Emperor
The Julio-Claudian dynasty ruled the Roman Empire from 27 B.C. to 68 A.D. and is named from the family names of Julius Caesar Augustus, who ruled from 27 B.C. to 14 A.D., and Tiberius Claudius Nero, who ruled from 14 A.D. to 37 A.D. The alliance of these families began with the marriage of Augustus to Livia, the mother of Tiberius. Augustus was not a Julian by birth, but was adopted in to the family by his mother’s uncle, Julius Caesar. Tiberius was a Claudian by birth, but was adopted by Augustus into the Julian family.
Adoption of males was a common practice in Ancient Rome. Both young boys and grown men were adopted and adoptions could even be granted upon death through the will of the deceased. (Such was the case with the adoption of Augustus.) It was especially prevalent among the upper senatorial class, whose duty it was to produce heirs to inherit not only estates and names, but also political traditions.
The power to give a child up for adoption resided solely with the paterfamilias, the eldest or highest ranking male in the household. The paterfamilias had absolute authority over his wife, children and slaves, all who were considered to be sub manu, which translates from Latin to mean “under his hand.”
The adopted boy kept relationships with his original family and took on the adoptive father’s name. He then reaped the benefits of connections and privileges associated with both families. Adoption usually occurred between families (with or without blood connections) that were of equal status and/or political allies. Nearly every politically high-ranking family used the adoption process to reinforce alliances and strengthen inter-family ties; marriages were used in the same way.
Claudius was from the Claudian bloodline and adopted into the Julian family by Augustus, who was by blood his great-granduncle. His mother was Antonia, the daughter of Mark Antony, and Octavia, the sister of Julius Caesar.
His father was Drusus, with whom Livia was six months pregnant when she married Augustus in 38 B.C. While paternity was assigned to her previous husband, there were suspicions that Drusus was actually the son of Augustus, conceived in an act of adultery. He was a celebrated war hero who died during a campaign in 9 B.C., when Claudius was one year old.
While such an imperial status normally meant an active public life of privilege, for young Claudius it was not so. Birth defects (possibly cerebral palsy) caused him to limp, drool, and stutter; he was hard of hearing and often sick. His family considered him an imbecile and an embarrassment and was consistent in keeping him out of the public eye as much as possible.
History records Livia, his grandmother, and Antonia, his very own mother, to have had little love and no patience for Claudius. Antonia would insult others by referring to them as “a bigger fool than my son Claudius.” She is also noted for calling him “a monster of a man, not finished but merely begun by Dame Nature.”
He was denied independence at the normal time for a male in Roman society, and like a woman, was kept under guardianship. When he assumed the gown of manhood, he was taken to the capital in a litter at midnight, without the customary escort. The traditional procedure was to be led to the Forum escorted be friends and relatives in full public view.
Letters from Augustus to Livia debate (among other things) whether or not Claudius should ever be given a public office (he decided no), whether he should be allowed to sit in the Imperial box to view the games (no again), and if he should have charge of a banquet of priests (yes, with a relative supervising him, lest he do something “ridiculous” or “make himself conspicuous”).
Also in letters, Augustus reveals his opinion that despite the spectacle of his physical impairments, Claudius did have some mental capacities. He comments that he considers the “poor fellow” to be “unlucky,” saying, “âÂ?¦in important matters, when his mind does not wander, the nobility of his character is apparent enough.”
Nevertheless, Claudius received only an augural priesthood (seer, soothsayer) and was not even named among the principal heirs of Augustus. Certainly he was not in the line-up for the imperial throne.
By 32 A.D. he was the only surviving child of Drusus and Antonia. Suspected assassinations, plots of overthrow, executions, and all other types of political intrigues swirled around him but he remained untouched, as if in the eye of the hurricane. Nobody took the “imperial idiot” into account when scheming.
Meanwhile, the idiot, with his definitely in tact mental capacities, was reading and growing into an accomplished scholar. He studied all the liberal arts with a particular passion for history, which gave him the understanding and knowledge of politics, power, and government. Little would anyone suspect just how important that knowledge would come to be. He also wrote multiple volumes on the histories of the Romans, Carthaginians, and Etruscans.
When his nephew Gaius, more commonly known as Caligula, came to power in 37 A.D. after the death of Tiberius, Claudius was given his first public office at forty-six years of age. It was meant to be a joke for the amusement of the mentally unbalanced new emperor. Caligula quickly went from unstable to completely insane, and in January of 41 A.D. he was assassinated in a conspiracy that involved Senators and members of his own bodyguard.
Widespread confusion and terror ensued as the German element of the bodyguard, loyal to whatever emperor was enthroned and paying them well for their easy city-work, went on a murderous rampage and soldiers from the Praetorian Guard set themselves to the task of looting the imperial palace.
History leaves two opinions of what next transpired. Some say that the soldiers stumbled upon the terrified Claudius hiding behind a curtain and decided then and there to make him their new emperor. Others say that the Guardsmen had met to discuss their predicament in light of the assassination, and decided to seek out Claudius as the sole-surviving adult male of the Julio-Claudian house and make him their emperor.
Either way, the frightened-out-of-his-wits Claudius was found hiding behind a curtain in an apartment known as the Hermaeum. He was placed in a litter and proclaimed emperor by the Praetorian Guard, an unprecedented occurrence.
Meanwhile, upon hearing of Caligula’s death, the Senate called a meeting. Some were calling out for a return to the Republic, the government of the people, while others began proposing themselves as the next emperor. They summoned Claudius to the House to give his opinion of the situation, but se sent word back to them that he was “detained by force and compulsion.” Common people crowded the hall and called for one ruler, naming Claudius.
At some point during their debating, self-promoting, and power-grabbing, news arrived that the Guard had chosen Claudius as the new emperor and he was with them in the Praetorian Camp. By this time, Claudius had calmed down some and allowed the soldiers to swear allegiance to him. Also by this time, he had become the first emperor to resort to bribery for the purpose of securing army loyalty. Each man was promised fifteen-thousand sesterces.
Once again, the historians (Josephus, Suetonius, Dio) leave differing opinions as to what happened next. In one version, the Senate sent tribunes to the camp to demand that he step down, but upon arrival and in the face of the support he had from the army, they instead asked him to come back and be ratified into the position of emperor. The other version says that Herod Agrippa was employed as an envoy between the Senate and the camp.
However it happened, the Senate recognized it was powerless against the several thousand armed men who were now in the employment of the emperor they had chosen and on January 25, 41 A.D., Claudius, the idiot and embarrassment of the noble Julio-Claudian houses, became the Emperor Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. Before this day, the term “Caesar” was a family name (to which Claudius had no claim), now it was a title of leadership (also the forerunner word of Czar and Kaiser).
What was true all along, but thinly veiled, was now utterly transparent: leadership was not in the hands of the people, but on the shoulders of the soldiers.
