Claudius

That he was by nature cruel and bloodthirsty appeared from matters both great and small. He would have the tortures of examinations and the punishments of parricides executed without delay, and demanded them in his own presence. When he had desired to witness a punishment according to ancient custom at Tibur, and the executioner was missing after the criminals had been bound to the stake, he persisted in waiting until evening for one who had been summoned from the city. At any gladiatorial show, whether his own or another’s, he would order even those who had fallen by chance to be slit in the throat, especially the net-fighters, so that he might watch the faces of the dying. When a certain pair of gladiators had fallen by mutual blows, he ordered little pocket-knives to be made for his own use from both of their blades without delay. He was so delighted with wild-beast hunts and the midday spectacles that he would go down to the show at dawn, and at midday, when the people were dismissed for luncheon, he would remain seated; and besides those scheduled, he would match others for some slight and sudden reason, even from the number of carpenters, attendants, and that class of people, if an automatic device, a movable platform, or any other such thing had failed to work properly. He even brought in one of his nomenclators, just as he was, in his toga.

But he was nothing so much as timid and suspicious. In the first days of his reign, although, as we have said, he made a display of civic equality, he did not dare to attend banquets unless bodyguards with lances stood around him and soldiers performed the duty of attendants, nor did he visit any sick person unless the bedroom had first been searched, and the mattresses and blankets felt and shaken out. In the remaining time, moreover, he always assigned searchers to those who came to pay their respects, and indeed to all of them, and most severe ones. For it was late and only with difficulty that he relaxed the rule so that women and young boys and girls wearing the toga praetexta should not be pawed over, and that inkhorns and pen-cases should not be taken away from anyone’s companion or scribe. During a civil outbreak, when Camillus, not doubting that he could be terrified even without a war, ordered him in an insulting, threatening, and insolent letter to resign the empire and lead an idle life in retirement, Claudius, having summoned the leading men, deliberated whether he should comply.

He was so terrified by certain conspiracies which were reported without foundation, that he attempted to resign the empire. When a certain man, as I related above, was caught with a dagger near him as he was sacrificing, he hastily summoned the senate by heralds, and with tears and outcries bewailed his condition, for whom nothing was safe anywhere, and for a long time abstained from public life. He cast off even his most burning love for Messalina not so much through the indignity of her insults as through fear of danger, since he believed that the empire was being acquired by her adulterous lover Silius; at which time, trembling in a shameful manner, he fled to the camp, asking nothing along the whole way except whether the empire was still safe for him.

No suspicion was so slight, no informant so trivial, that it did not inject a considerable anxiety into him and compel him to take precautions and seek vengeance. One of the litigants, having drawn him aside during the morning salutatio, declared that he had seen in his sleep that the emperor was being killed by someone; then shortly after, as if recognizing the assassin, he pointed out his own legal opponent who was handing in a petition; and immediately the man, as if caught in the act, was dragged off to punishment. In like manner they say Appius Silanus was ruined; when Messalina and Narcissus had conspired to destroy him, they divided the parts between them, and the one, before dawn, broke into his patron’s bedroom, feigning astonishment, asserting that he had dreamed that violence was offered to him by Appius; the other, shaping her features to express wonder, reported that the same vision had appeared to her too for several nights now; and not long after, Appius was announced to be breaking in, according to the plot (having been ordered the day before to be present at that very time), and as if the truth of the dream were clearly being realized, he was ordered to be summoned immediately and put to death. Nor did Claudius hesitate on the following day to report the sequence of events to the senate and to express his thanks to the freedman for keeping watch over his safety even while asleep.