Mocked by his own family, Claudius survived the purges and became emperor
A limp, a stammer and a tremor left Claudius shunned by his relatives and kept out of public life. Rivals saw no threat in him, so he outlived the bloodletting under Tiberius and Caligula. When Caligula was killed, the Praetorian Guard proclaimed this overlooked last adult male of the family emperor.
Claudius arrived on 1 August 10 BC in the Gallic city of Lugdunum, today's Lyon, where his father Drusus the Elder was serving as a military commander, and so became the first Roman emperor born outside Italy. His pedigree was impeccable: his mother Antonia Minor was the daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia, sister of Augustus, and his father's mother was Livia, Augustus's wife. His father died in Germania in 9 BC after falling from a horse, and his mother, who called him a monster and a byword for stupidity, seems to have handed him to Livia for years.
He held no office until AD 37, when he shared a consulship with his nephew Caligula. After taking power in AD 41 he worked hard to borrow legitimacy: he took the name Augustus, kept the title Germanicus to recall his celebrated father and brother, called himself son of Drusus, deified Livia and even revived a rumour that Augustus had secretly fathered Drusus.
For all his inexperience, he proved a capable administrator. He brought freedmen into the imperial civil service, helped repair finances drained by Caligula, and built roads, aqueducts and canals across the empire. Fascinated by law, he sat as judge in public trials and issued edicts every day. His reign also launched the successful Roman conquest of Britain.
Parts of the aristocracy never stopped regarding him as weak, and his efforts to secure his position cost many senators their lives, which blackened his name with ancient historians. Modern scholars have judged him more kindly. He died on 13 October AD 54, aged 63, quite possibly poisoned by his wife Agrippina the Younger, according to many writers, and was succeeded by Nero, his grandnephew and adopted stepson.
Source: Claudius
