063 - A Farewell to Claudius

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 63, A Farewell to Claudius. When we left off last time, Claudius was being informed that his cheating wife Messalina had been executed. Though her crime could easily be written off as a mere personal betrayal, when seen from the high vista of imperial politics, infidelity becomes indistinguishable from treason. When the players involved are the emperor and the empress, simple domestic breakdowns quickly become dangerous affairs of state. Messalina's taking of a new husband created a dangerous new power center in opposition to Claudius's existing imperial court. As a result, Messalina and her lover Cilius were not allowed to simply go along their merry way and start a new life together, tainted a bit by scandal, but ultimately no worse to wear. No, within days of the revelation of their secret marriage, they were both dead. Cilius by suicide, Messalina by execution. A further consequence of the high vista of political power upon which the emperor sat was that there was no time for mourning. The search for a new wife began immediately.

But before we get into the details of Claudius's ill-fated marriage to his niece Agrippina and the subsequent rise to power of her son Nero, I want to backtrack a little bit and round out the accomplishments and failures of Claudius's administration, because once Agrippina gets into the picture, dear Claudius will not be long for this world. Perhaps the longest lasting contribution Claudius made to the empire was the series of territorial annexations he initiated. In addition to the envelopment of southern Britannia, which we have already covered, Claudius's thirteen years in power saw the creation of a number of new provinces in regions that had previously existed only as allied client kingdoms. The territories in question were already firmly under Roman control, but Claudius and his freedmen secretariat recognized that the loose transactional nature of that control was inefficient and ran counter to the centralized rational administration that they were all working to create.

Probably first on the docket, though I can't seem to nail down a definitive date, was the territory of Noricum, which had maintained its autonomy during the Augustan constitutional settlement out of deference for Noricum's support of the Caesars during the various civil wars. This annexation amounted to little more than declaring it so, as Noricum was already fully incorporated into the empire in every other sense of the word. The locals accepted the change with a shrug, and you get the feeling that a few of them might have actually been surprised to learn that they hadn't been a province this whole time. Next up were the territories of Lycia and Pamphylia in southern Anatolia, which were annexed in 43 AD. The region had existed as an independent federation of cities since the time of the Third Macedonian War, but, like I said, it was time to streamline imperial administration. The locals were proud of their independence, but put up no great fight when word came about the reorganization.

Finally came the official seizure of Thrace, the wild country between Macedonia and the Hellespont. The independent-minded hill tribes of the region had long fought to maintain independence not just from Rome, but also from each other, and when the Roman-backed, but only vaguely recognized client king of, quote, Thrace, was murdered in 46, Claudius decided to just impose Roman order rather than go through another round of intertribal squabbling about who ought to be the next king. These acquisitions all went relatively smoothly, but two additional territories gave the Romans trouble in their consolidation efforts.

In the west, Claudius inherited a mess created by Caligula in what would become the two administrative provinces in Mauretania. Back in 40 AD, Caligula decided that he wanted direct control of the region, and had invited the client king of the North African territory to Rome for a meeting. As soon as the unsuspecting monarch arrived, though, Caligula had him seized and executed. Immediately a revolt broke out back in Africa against the Roman officials sent by Caligula to annex the region into the empire. The incident played a part in the decision to assassinate Caligula, as senators and officials were appalled by the totally unnecessary destabilization of an otherwise peaceful corner of the empire. When Claudius became emperor, though, he was obliged to follow through on the annexation. Whether or not it was the right thing to do was now irrelevant. Men were up in arms against Rome, and that was unacceptable. Though most of the details had been lost, it seems that it took a few years to put the revolt down before Mauretania too formally joined the empire.

In the east, Claudius dealt with the forever maddening province of Judea. The region had been incorporated into the empire in 6 AD by Augustus, but after the good poke in the eye Caligula had given the locals when he tried to have a statue of himself placed in the Temple of Jerusalem, Claudius thought it prudent to grant Judea autonomy under the rule of his friend Herod Agrippa. When Herod Agrippa died three years later, according to Christian tradition smotened by the Lord for the crime of imprisoning the Apostle Peter and executing the Apostle James, control of Judea passed back to Rome. Claudius then handed autonomy back to Herod Agrippa's son in 48 AD in an attempt to maintain some kind of Roman jurisdiction over the notoriously independent Jews who agitated constantly against foreign rule. The relationship between Judea and Rome will remain contentious for years, until finally in 66 AD the so-called Great Revolt will break out, leading to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish Diaspora of 70 AD, which we will deal with in more detail later.

Taken as a whole, Claudius' reign marks the most active in terms of territorial acquisition we have seen since Augustus and will remain unmatched until Trajan gets the expansionary itch in the early 100s AD. At thehistoryofrome.typepad.com there is a map of all the provinces brought into the empire during these years. In addition to his geographic reorganizations, Claudius also reorganized the Roman political order. Possibly as a result of all the assassination attempts he dealt with during the early years of his reign, Claudius decided to reintroduce the long-ignored office of censor, which had been left vacant since the days of Augustus. You will recall that in addition to the obvious duty of taking the census, the censor also maintained the senatorial roles and acted as a sort of moral policeman. A censor had the final say over who was in and who was out of the Senate. Once upon a time this had been meant to ensure that crass and degenerate senators were replaced by more worthy men, but in practice this function became a political tool used to keep allies and adversaries alike in line.

Claudius desperately needed to keep his adversaries and allies in line, so the emperor stepped into the long-vacant office in 47 AD and used its authority to do some housekeeping. Claudius purged from the roles all the families that had been suspected of plotting against him. Suddenly, all the men who had fancied themselves possible candidates for the emperorship, due to their senatorial status, now found themselves nothing more than mere private citizens, without a leg to stand on politically. And of course, in their place, Claudius brought in men he could trust to be loyal, or at the very least, apathetic towards his administration.

Claudius also took his reformation of the Senate one step further, by looking out to the provinces for eligible senatorial candidates. Conservative guardians of Italian preeminence were shocked to now find themselves seated alongside barbarian Gauls, who Claudius had determined deserved to be seated, due to their long-standing loyalty to Rome and satisfaction of the wealth requirements. It was a move that was hotly debated, but Claudius held firm that the future strength of the empire required Rome to admit the provincials as equal, just as, so long ago, the Latins had been absorbed into Rome, and then, later, the whole of the Italian peninsula. By degrees, the Roman Empire must shed its strictly Roman identity and embrace its multinational character if it's ever going to survive. And in this, Claudius was exactly right. Had the conservatives won the debate and kept the provincials locked out, the Roman Empire likely would have dissolved long before it did.

I would also like to mention at this point that Claudius was assisted in all of this by a co-censor named Lucius Vitellius. I only bring this up because Lucius Vitellius' eldest son, Aulus Vitellius Germanicus, is one of the four emperors of the chaotic year of the four emperors, that followed the suicide of Nero in 68 AD, and, if I do this right, I will have introduced all four of the four emperors by the end of this episode. I've already mentioned Vespasian, the man who will finally emerge victorious from that chaotic year, so that is two down and two to go.

The last little episode I want to mention before we get into Agrippina is the ill-fated draining of the Fusine Lake. The idea was to increase the amount of arable land by draining the 140 square kilometer lake in central Italy, which had no natural outlet and was a frequent source of malaria outbreaks. The project was overseen by Narcissus, and over the course of 11 years, workers built five and a half kilometers of tunnels and canals to reach a natural outlet. In theory, the lake would slowly and steadily disappear, but, on the big opening day of the drainpipe, which included speeches, gladiatorial games, and much pomp and circumstance, all that happened was that everyone quickly discovered the tunnel contained too tight a bend which caused the whole system to back up and wash out the site of all the ceremonies, causing the emperor and all his assembled guests to make a run for it. Not exactly his proudest moment, but in defense of Claudius, he would not be the last man to try and fail to drain the Fusine Lake. It would not be until the 1800s that the feat was finally accomplished by a Swiss engineer.

The spectacular failure of the project was an embarrassment for Claudius, but it was an even bigger one for Narcissus. It did not help that Claudius' new wife, Agrippina, whose elevation to empress Narcissus had opposed, was using the opportunity afforded by the debacle to accuse Narcissus of embezzlement and incompetence. It didn't really matter whether or not the charges were true, though from everything I know about the man I actually find it pretty easy to imagine Narcissus skimming a bit off the top. No, what mattered was that Agrippina had her chance to get rid of the troublesome freedman who was allying himself with Claudius' son Britannicus in what was shaping up to be another dynastic struggle between the Julio and Claudian halves of the family. In this struggle, the new empress would prove to be a formidable opponent in the game of power politics.

Julia Agrippina, known to us as Agrippina Minor or Agrippina the Younger, was born in November of 15 AD, the eldest daughter of Germanicus and his wife, Agrippina. Named for her mother, Agrippina Minor was carted around the empire by her parents until she wound up settled back in Rome following the death of her father in 19 AD. From that point, she was raised by her mother and then by her great-grandmother, Livia, who we will see seems to have had a great influence on the child. In 28 AD, Tiberius ordered the thirteen-year-old Agrippina to marry the forty-plus-year-old Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, who was the grandson of Augustus' sister Octavia and Mark Antony. Domitius was apparently something of a cad, though the stories about him were likely exaggerated to help reinforce the despicable nature of his son, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, the future Emperor Nero, who Agrippina gave birth to in 37 AD. To avoid confusion, I am going to start calling the boy Nero right now, even though he will remain Lucius until his adoption by Claudius in 50 AD.

Nero would wind up being Agrippina's only natural child as Domitius died of congestive heart failure in January of 40 AD. You will recall from the episode on Caligula that at first Agrippina and her other sisters were held in exalted status once their brother became Emperor, but after the death of Drusilla, the relationship between the remaining siblings seems to have soured. As I mentioned, in 39 AD, Agrippina and her sister Julia Lovilla were accused of conspiring against their brother's life with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who was a.) the widower of Drusilla, b.) already tagged by Caligula as a potential heir, and c.) apparently the lover of both Agrippina and Julia Lovilla. When the plot was exposed, Caligula banished his sisters to a small island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, where legend has it that he forced them to dive for sponges to earn their room and board. At this point, Agrippina had her entire estate confiscated, and her son Nero was stripped of the inheritance left to him by Domitius. Nero himself was carted off to live with a paternal aunt, and did not seem a likely candidate to survive childhood.

But Agrippina and Nero's fortunes turned when Caligula was assassinated in 41. Claudius recalled the banished sisters, and Agrippina and her son were reunited. The now penniless princess cast about looking for a man with status and wealth necessary to get her back into the lifestyle to which she had grown accustomed. According to Suetonius, she set her sights on the already married general Galba, but was rebuked. Galba, of course, would eventually become the first of the four emperors in the year of four emperors, so, hey, that's three down and one to go. Agrippina got over the rejection, and moved on to Gaius Sollustus Crispus Passienus, who Claudius pressured to accept Agrippina's advances. Passienus had already been consul once, and would be so again in 44, so his high status returned Agrippina to the center of court life. But the witty and vibrant Passienus fell ill and died in 47 AD, leaving Agrippina widowed once again, though this time she emerged from her bereavement an extremely wealthy woman. This led to her very first accusation of poisoning, which seems to be something of a rite of passage for Julio-Claudian women.

When Messalina was executed, and the emperor was left a bachelor, the now single Agrippina defied convention and good taste by openly pursuing her uncle as a potential husband. As I said at the end of the last episode, the execution of Messalina led each of Claudius' trusted freedmen to back a different woman for the emperorship. Narcissus backed Claudius' former wife Aelia Patina, and Callistus backed Lolia Paulina, who had been married to Caligula for about six months in 38 AD. Paulus, the secretary of the treasury meanwhile, pushed for Claudius to do the unthinkable. He and Agrippina had become lovers, and if she became empress, well, Paulus figured that he would be set for life. So he argued that the Julio and Claudian wings of the family must be reunited for the dynasty and Rome to survive. Claudius was swayed by these arguments, and took the same line to the senate when he announced his intention to marry his own niece. It was for the good of the empire, Claudius said, and you should treat it as such, and not think too hard about the clear-cut incestual union I am proposing here. The senate wasn't very happy about it, but they relented and backed the marriage. The people of Rome, however, were not so understanding, and refused to get on board with the program. The marriage would spark a precipitous decline in Claudius' popularity.

Agrippina had gone through a number of image makeovers in her life, from pitiable daughter of Germanicus, to immoral harlot of Caligula's court, to sympathetic exiled mother. With her marriage to Claudius on New Year's Day 49 A.D., though, she crystallized into the woman history remembers her as, the ruthlessly ambitious empress of Rome. Much like Livia before her, Agrippina poured her ambition into the only vessel a woman like her could use to gain and hold power in patriarchal Rome, her son. Even before her marriage to Claudius, Agrippina was hard at work setting Nero up for success. In 48 A.D., she had conspired with the aforementioned co-censor Vitellius to smear the fiancée of Claudius' daughter, Claudia Octavia, to clear the way for Nero to marry into the imperial family. Agrippina succeeded in breaking up the engagement, leading said fiancée to commit suicide along the way, but it would take a few years before she could initiate the marriage between Nero and Claudia. Nero was, after all, only ten at the time, and Claudia was even younger.

But Agrippina could afford to wait, because the next year she managed to pull off the trick of marrying the emperor himself. Agrippina, who had been pig-ponging between relevance and obscurity for years, was now back in power. But she didn't lose sight of the ball, and at once began lobbying Claudius to adopt Nero and make him an heir. In 50, Claudius finally relented and adopted 13-year-old Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, at which point the boy took the name Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus, shortened for our purposes to Nero. Also following in the footsteps of her great-grandmother Livia, Agrippina convinced Claudius to grant her the title Augusta, and allow her access to special carriages that were generally reserved for priests. These special privileges were outward signs of the influence Agrippina held over her uncle slash husband. In a particularly unprecedented display, Claudius actually named a veteran's colony he chartered Agrippina Nysium, the only colony in the whole long history of the empire to be named after a woman.

But as important as it was to Agrippina that she gather up as much power as she could in the near term, her long-term goal still revolved around her son. The 60-plus-year-old Claudius was nearing the end of his life, while the 35-year-old Agrippina still had a lot of years left. And that meant making sure that her son ascended to the throne when Claudius died. The one obvious obstacle to Agrippina's agenda was Claudius's natural son, 9-year-old Brutannicus. Although Nero now had the advantage of technically being Claudius's eldest son, there was no accounting for the favoritism Claudius might be tempted to show his own offspring. So upon becoming empress, Agrippina scrubbed the imperial palace of anyone who had been connected to Messalina and who might be tempted to advance Brutannicus's interests. When Claudius cast about for advice on what to do about the issue of succession, Agrippina wanted to make sure that the only people around to speak up would be those firmly in her corner. She went so far as to have Brutannicus's tutor killed when he raised too much of a stink about his pupil being neglected by the emperor.

Unfortunately for Agrippina, the man who emerged as one of Brutannicus's greatest advocates was one of the few men she could not simply dispose of on a whim, Narcissus. The freedman had his doubts about Brutannicus, but those paled in comparison to his doubts about Nero. The boy was shaping up to be petulant, selfish, and vain. When Narcissus looked at Nero, he saw the second coming of Caligula. Agrippina worked hard to try to box Narcissus out, and as I said, she went after him hard over the Fusine Lake debacle, but the freedman was tied too deeply to the emperor. Try as she might, Agrippina could not dislodge Narcissus from Claudius's ear.

But despite that, as was usually the case during these years, Agrippina finally did get her way, at least partially. And in 51 AD, 14-year-old Nero was elevated to manhood and named as a co-heir alongside the still underage Brutannicus. In theory, they were meant to rule together when the time came, but in practice, the timing of Claudius's declaration opened a window of a few years where Nero was now a man and able to assume the duties of state, while Brutannicus was still legally a child. For all intents and purposes, Nero, right now, was the sole heir. Agrippina would not fail to miss the significance of this development.

In 53 AD, Nero's position was strengthened even more by a marriage to his now stepsister, Claudia Octavia. The public was starting to get behind the idea that this grandson of Germanicus was destined to be their next emperor. But just as everything seemed to be going Agrippina's way, Claudius began to regret having given so much to Nero at the expense of his own son. Whether Narcissus was behind the change of heart, or whether the emperor himself came to his own conclusions is unknown, but at some point in 54 AD, Claudius began to look at Brutannicus more and more as his rightful heir. Agrippina sensed that the winds were beginning to blow against her, and recognized that she might be facing a pretty clear deadline. Brutannicus would soon be coming of age, and once he was a legal adult, Claudius was making noise about no longer then needing his manipulative wife and her spoiled teenage son. With Brutannicus slated to take the rights of manhood in just six months, Agrippina had no time to spare. She was too close to fulfilling her dreams to let it all just slip away.

Now I am sort of going with the story here that Agrippina did indeed poison Claudius in October of 54, but it should be noted that though the ancient sources all agree that she did it, there was never any firm evidence they could point to to prove their case. The accusation is based on supposition and probability coupled with the old wicked stepmother motif that runs through all of Roman culture. Basically, Agrippina had the means, motive, and opportunity, and her character points to her acting on all three. The most common version of the story is that Agrippina conspired with Claudius' taster to slip the emperor a few poisoned mushrooms, though his doctor was also fingered as a possible culprit. Whether it really was poison, which I happen to believe, or whether it was just nature taking its course, Claudius became violently ill and died on October 13, 54 AD. He was 64 years old and had ruled the empire for 13 fairly successful years.

The life and career of Claudius has to be one of the more unique in all of history. Good men and bad men, ambitious men and unassuming men, wise men and dumb men, have all taken their turns in power, but all wind up conforming to some kind of recognizable archetype. But I can't really think of anyone who quite resembles Claudius, the accidental emperor. The guy was a punchline for his whole life. I doubt there could have been lower expectations when it was announced that Uncle Claudius was now in charge, but not only did he clear the minimal bar that had been set for him, but he was far and away the best emperor since Augustus himself.

Now I know that isn't saying very much, as between the purges of Tiberius and, well, the everything of Caligula, it doesn't take a whole lot to earn the title best emperor since Augustus, but when you think about the image most Romans had in their heads of Claudius, the slow-witted, stuttering dunce, you have to admit that it's impressive how out of nowhere he came to claim that prize. And the thing is, if you rank all the emperors, past, present, and future, which is a list of somewhere around a hundred men depending on who's counting, I think Claudius pretty comfortably sits in the top ten. He's not a great emperor like Augustus or Constantine or Diocletian, and he probably sits behind the so-called five good emperors in terms of impact and talent, but yeah, Claudius is in the top ten. I'm going to miss him.

Next week, we'll get into one of the bottom feeders who is constantly duking it out with Caligula and Elagabalus and Commodus for the title of worst emperor ever. Though I think Nero was pretty clearly not as bad as Caligula, and his leisure pursuits were far less insane, he was still pretty awful. The problem with Nero is that he didn't seem to have much interest in actually being emperor. He wanted to play gladiator and sing songs and compete in games. To him, the best part of being emperor is that everyone lets you win at everything. In his defense, Nero was only 16 years old when he ascended to the throne, which explains a great deal of his immaturity, but still, at a certain point, you've got to look yourself in the mirror and want to be a better person. If not for yourself, then for the people who are counting on you to do a good job. Because if you don't have that moment, and you just stay the same immature kid your whole life, well, eventually you wind up committing a panicked suicide after your enemies have launched a successful coup d'etat.