Claudius

With the empire established, he considered nothing more important than to erase from memory those two days in which there had been hesitation about changing the state of the republic. Therefore he decreed and granted for all time a pardon and oblivion for all deeds and words in that period, with only a few tribunes and centurions from the number of the conspirators against Gaius having been executed, both for the sake of example and because he had learned that they had also demanded his own death. Turning from here to the duties of piety, he established no oath more sacred or more frequent for himself than by Augustus. He saw to it that divine honors were decreed for his grandmother Livia, and a chariot of elephants, similar to that of Augustus, in the circus procession; for his parents public funeral rites, and furthermore for his father annual circus games on his birthday, for his mother a carriage in which she might be drawn through the circus, and the title of Augusta, which she had refused while alive. †As for his brother’s memory, celebrated on every occasion, he also produced a Greek comedy at the Neapolitan contest and crowned it according to the decision of the judges. He did not pass over even Mark Antony without honor and without grateful mention, having once declared by an edict that he requested them all the more earnestly to celebrate the birthday of his father Drusus, because it was the same as that of his grandfather Antony. He completed for Tiberius a marble arch near the theater of Pompey, which had indeed been decreed once by the senate but left unfinished. Although he rescinded all the acts of Gaius, he nevertheless forbade the day of his murder, although it was the beginning of his own principate, to be entered among the holidays.

But in exalting himself moderate and unassuming, he abstained from the forename of Emperor, refused excessive honors, and passed over the betrothal of his daughter and the birthday of his grandson born to him in silence and only with domestic observance. He restored none of the exiles except by the authority of the senate. That he might be allowed to bring with him into the senate house the praetorian prefect and the military tribunes, and that the decisions which his procurators made in judging should be valid, he requested as a favor. He petitioned the consuls for the right to hold markets on his private estates. He frequently attended the judicial inquiries of the magistrates as one of their advisers; and when they were exhibiting spectacles, he himself rose with the rest of the crowd and honored them with voice and hand. To the tribunes of the plebs who approached him before his tribunal, he excused himself because, on account of the narrowness of space, he could not hear them except while they were standing. Therefore in a short space of time he gathered so much love and favor, that when it was reported that he, having set out for Ostia, had perished by an ambush, the people in great consternation did not cease to assail both the soldier as a traitor and the senate as a parricide with terrible curses, until one and then another, and soon more, having been brought onto the rostra by the magistrates, confirmed that he was safe and approaching.

Nevertheless, he did not remain altogether free from plots, but was harassed both by individuals, and by a faction, and finally by a civil war. A man of the plebs was caught in the middle of the night near his bedchamber with a dagger; there were also found two of the equestrian order waiting in public with a sword-stick and a hunting knife, the one to attack him as he left the theater, the other as he was sacrificing at the temple of Mars. Moreover, Gallus Asinius and Statilius Corvinus, grandsons of the orators Pollio and Messala, conspired for a revolution, having taken to their side several of his own freedmen and slaves. Furius Camillus Scribonianus, legate of Dalmatia, started a civil war; but within five days he was crushed by the legions, which, having changed their allegiance, were turned to repentance by religious awe, after, when the march to the new emperor had been ordered, by some chance and divine intervention, neither could the eagles be adorned nor the standards be pulled up and moved.

He held four consulships in addition to his previous one; of which he held the first two consecutively, the following ones after an interval, every fourth year, the last for six months, the others for two months, but the third, by a new precedent regarding a princeps, having been substituted in place of one who had died. He administered justice most laboriously, both as consul and outside of office, even on his own solemn days and those of his family, and sometimes even on holidays of ancient origin and sacred days. And not always following the prescriptions of the laws, he moderated the severity or leniency of many penalties according to what was good and fair, just as he was moved; for he both restored actions to those who, before private judges, had lost their case through the formula by asking for too much, and, exceeding the legal penalty, condemned to the wild beasts those convicted of greater fraud.