Claudius

Under Gaius at last, his brother’s son, who was gathering popular favor at the beginning of his reign by every kind of flattery, Claudius initiated his public career and held the consulship jointly with him for two months. And it happened that, as he was entering the forum for the first time with the fasces, an eagle flying past perched on his right shoulder. He also drew lots for a second consulship for the fourth year from then; and he sometimes presided over the spectacles in place of Gaius, with the people acclaiming: ‘Good fortune!’ partly to ‘the uncle of the emperor,’ partly to ‘the brother of Germanicus!’

Nevertheless, he lived no less exposed to insults. For even if he arrived a little too late for the appointed hour of dinner, he was not admitted except with difficulty and only after walking all the way around the dining room, and whenever he fell asleep after food, which happened to him frequently, he was pelted with the stones of olives or dates, and sometimes he was awakened by the jesters with a rod or a whip, as if in play. They were also accustomed to put slippers on his hands as he snored, so that, suddenly awakened, he would rub his own face with them.

But he did not even lack dangers. First, in his consulship itself, because he had been too slow in caring for the contracting and erecting of the statues of Nero and Drusus, the brothers of Caesar, he was almost removed from his office; then, by the accusation of some stranger or even of his own household, he was constantly and in various ways harassed. Indeed, when the conspiracy of Lepidus and Gaetulicus was detected, having been sent to Germany among the envoys to offer congratulations, he even encountered danger to his life, since Gaius was indignant and raging that his uncle of all people had been sent to him, as if to govern a boy, so much so that there were not lacking those who reported that he was even thrown headlong into the river, just as he had arrived, fully clothed. And from then on, he always gave his opinion last among the consulars in the senate, being asked after everyone else for the sake of humiliation. An investigation of a forged will was also admitted, which he himself had also signed. Finally, forced to spend eight million sesterces for his admission to a new priesthood, he fell into such financial difficulties that, since he could not discharge his obligation pledged to the treasury, his property was advertised for sale under the law of foreclosure, in vain, by the edict of the prefects.

Having passed the greatest part of his life through these and similar things, in his fiftieth year he seized the empire by an exceedingly marvelous chance. Excluded among the others by the assassins of Gaius, when they cleared away the crowd on the pretext that Gaius desired privacy, he had retired to a room named the Hermaeum; and not long after, terrified by the rumor of the murder, he crawled out to a neighboring balcony and hid himself between the curtains hung before the doors. As he was hiding, a common soldier running about by chance, having noticed his feet, out of eagerness to find out who it was, recognized him, and having dragged him out, as Claudius fell at his knees in fear, saluted him as emperor. From there he led him to the other fellow-soldiers, who were wavering and as yet did nothing but rage. By them he was placed in a litter and, because his own attendants had fled, carried to the camp by the soldiers taking turns on their shoulders, sad and trembling, while the crowd they met pitied him as if an innocent man were being dragged to execution. Received within the rampart, he spent the night among the sentries of the soldiers, with somewhat less hope than confidence. For the consuls with the senate and the urban cohorts had occupied the forum and the Capitol, intending to assert the common liberty; and having been summoned himself by the tribunes of the plebs to the senate house to advise on what seemed best, he replied that he was held by force and necessity. But on the following day, since the senate was too slow in executing their attempts because of weariness and the dissension of those who voted for different things, and since the multitude, which stood around, was already demanding a single ruler and by name, he allowed the armed men to swear allegiance to his name before the assembly, and promised fifteen thousand sesterces to each, being the first of the Caesars to pledge the loyalty of the soldier even with a bounty.