Claudius

Nor did he pursue Greek studies with any less care, declaring his love for and the excellence of the language on every occasion. To a certain barbarian who was speaking in Greek and Latin, he said: “Since you are prepared with both of our languages”; and in recommending Achaia to the conscript fathers, he said that this province was dear to him because of the exchange of common studies; and he often replied to ambassadors in the senate in a continuous speech. Indeed, he also spoke much on the tribunal using Homeric verses. Whenever he had avenged himself on an enemy or a conspirator, he rarely gave any other password to the tribune of the guard when asking for it in the customary manner than: “To ward off a man when he is the first to do you harm.” Finally, he even wrote histories in Greek, twenty books of “Tyrrhenica” and eight of “Carchedoniaca.” For the sake of these, a new Museum was added to the old one at Alexandria, named after him; and it was established that every year, on appointed days, the books of the “Tyrrhenica” in one, and those of the “Carchedoniaca” in the other, should be read in their entirety by single readers in turn, as if in a lecture hall.

Near the end of his life, he had given certain and by no means obscure signs of repenting of his marriage to Agrippina and his adoption of Nero, since when his freedmen were mentioning and praising the trial in which he had condemned a certain woman accused of adultery the day before, he boasted that it was also his destiny to have marriages that were all unchaste, yet not unpunished; and soon after, embracing Britannicus, whom he happened to meet, very closely, he exhorted him to grow up and receive from him an account of all his deeds; adding besides in Greek: “He who wounded shall heal.” And when he had determined to give the toga to him, who was still under age and tender, as soon as his stature would permit, he added: “So that at last the Roman people may have a true Caesar.”

And not long after he also wrote his testament and sealed it with the seals of all the magistrates. Therefore, before he could proceed any further, he was prevented by Agrippina, whom besides these things her own conscience and no less the informers of many crimes were accusing. And indeed it is agreed that he was killed by poison; but where and by whom it was given, there is disagreement. Some report that it was while he was feasting in the citadel with the priests, by Halotus the eunuch, his taster; others, at a family banquet, by Agrippina herself, who had offered a poisoned mushroom to him, who was exceedingly fond of such food. There is also diverse rumor about what followed. Many say that immediately upon swallowing the poison he became speechless, and being racked with pains, died during the whole night near dawn. Some say that at the beginning he fell asleep, then as the food overflowed he vomited everything, and was attacked again with poison, though it is uncertain whether it was added to his gruel, when he had to be refreshed with food as if exhausted, or administered by an enema, so that as if laboring under fullness he might be helped by this kind of evacuation as well.

His death was concealed until everything could be arranged regarding his successor. And so vows were undertaken as if he were still sick, and comic actors were brought in under pretense of entertaining him as if he desired it. He passed away on the third day before the Ides of October in the consulship of Asinius Marcellus and Acilius Aviola, in the sixty-fourth year of his age and the fourteenth of his reign, and was buried with the solemn funeral procession of emperors and enrolled among the number of the gods; which honor, neglected and abolished by Nero, he soon recovered through Vespasian.

The principal omens of his death were: the rising of a hairy star, which they call a comet, the striking by lightning of the monument of his father Drusus, and the fact that in the same year most of the magistrates of every kind had died. But he himself also seems not to have been ignorant of or to have concealed the final period of his life, indeed by several proofs. For when he was designating consuls, he designated no one beyond the month in which he died, and in the senate, which he attended for the very last time, having strongly exhorted his children to harmony, he suppliantly commended the youth of both to the fathers, and in his last trial on the tribunal, he declared once and again that he had reached the end of mortal life, although those who heard it deprecated the omen.