- For other Romans named Claudius see Claudius (gens).
Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar Drusus (August 1, 10 BC - October 13, 54), originally known as Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, was the fourth Roman Emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, ruling from January 24th 41 to his death in 54. Born in Lugdunum in Gaul (modern-day Lyon, France), to Drusus and Antonia Minor, he was the first Roman Emperor to be born outside Italy.
Claudius was considered a rather unlikely man to become emperor. He reportedly walked with a heavy limp his entire life and spoke with a stammer, and his despairing family had virtually excluded him from public office until his consulship with his nephew Caligula in 37. This infirmity may have saved him from the fate of many other Roman nobles during the purges of Tiberius's and Caligula's reigns.
Exclusion from public life suited his inclination towards the academic. We know that he wrote extensively, especially histories, but all of these are now lost. He also proposed a reform of the Roman alphabet by introducing three new letters: a backwards, upside-down 'F' to represent consonantal U; a broken 'H' to represent the sound of Greek Upsilon; and a backwards 'C' to replace BS. These letters were used to a small extent on public inscriptions dating from his reign but their use was abandoned after his death.
After a conspiracy of officers, including Cassius Chaerea, and Senators assassinated Caligula, a group of regular soldiers "appointed" Claudius his successor, thinking that in Claudius they would have a pliant benefactor. Although Claudius had no intention of becoming Emperor, shortly after the Senate confirmed his status he embarked on several ambitious projects, one of which was the expansion of the Roman harbor at Ostia. Rome enjoyed military success under Claudius as well. In 47, his legions finally subdued Britannia, bringing the restive province into the Empire for the next 350 years.
Claudius married four times. His first two marriages, to Plautia Urgulanilla and Aelia Paetina, ended in divorce. His third wife, Messalina, was put to death on his orders. His last wife was his niece Agrippina.
Urgulanilla gave birth to two children: a son, Claudius Drusus, and a daughter, Claudia. According to Suetonius, Claudius Drusus had just been betrothed to Junilla, the daughter of Sejanus, when he choked to death on a pear he had thrown into the air and caught in his mouth. There was some doubt as to Claudia's parentage, and Claudius eventually repudiated her. His second marriage produced one child, a daughter named Claudia Antonia. Messalina gave birth to two children: a son, Britannicus, and a daughter, Octavia.
The emperor Claudius was the protagonist of the books I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves. The books are written from a first-person perspective, giving the impression of having been written by Claudius himself as his autobiography. Graves's conceit that they were translations of writings by Claudius that had been recently discovered extended even to the point for Claudius to relate that his visit to an oracle predicted that they would be discovered "nineteen hundred year or near" later. Those books were the basis for a thirteen-part BBC series, first broadcast in the U.S. on Masterpiece Theatre in 1977, also titled I, Claudius and starring Derek Jacobi in the title role.
see: Julio-Claudian Family Tree
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