CLAUDIUS (41-54).


A strong party was now in favor of returning to a republican form of
government; but while the Senate was considering this question, the
Praetorian Guard settled it by proclaiming CLAUDIUS Emperor.

Claudius was the uncle of Caligula and the nephew of Tiberius. He was
a man of learning and good parts, but a glutton, and the slave of his
two wives, who were both bad women. His first wife, MESSALÍNA, was so
notorious that her name has became almost a synonym for wickedness.
His second wife, his niece AGRIPPÍNA, sister of Caligula, was nearly
as bad. This woman had by her former husband, Domitius, a son, whom
she induced the Emperor to adopt under the name of NERO. The faithless
wife then caused her husband to be poisoned, and her son to be
proclaimed Emperor.

At Rome the rule of Claudius was mild, and on the whole beneficial. In
the government of the provinces he was rigorous and severe. He
undertook the CONQUEST OF BRITAIN, and in a campaign of sixteen days
he laid the foundation of its final subjugation, which occurred about
forty years later, under the noted general AGRICOLA: It remained a
Roman province for four hundred years, but the people never
assimilated Roman customs, as did the Gauls, and when the Roman
garrisons were withdrawn, they quickly returned to their former
condition. However, many remains of Roman buildings in the island show
that it was for the time well under subjection.

The public works of Claudius were on a grand scale. He constructed a
new harbor at the mouth of the Tiber, and built the great aqueduct