The famous cities of Trèves in France, Cologne on the Rhine, and Colchester in England owe their origin to the reign of Claudius. The original name of Cologne was Colonia Agrippinensis for Agrippina, who was born in this vicinity. As empress she assumed a leadership in military matters never before occupied by a woman, and made it her boast that she was the first of her sex thus to found a colony of Roman veterans. Colchester, meaning the camp on the river Colne, was on the site of the ancient town of Camelodunum, the residence of the principal potentate of southern Britain, the chief of the Trinobantes. When these people were put to flight, Claudius established there a Roman camp and colony to keep them and the other barbarous tribes in awe. They were taught to ascribe the victory of the Romans to the favor of certain divinities; and among the shrines erected in the colony was a temple of unusual size for the worship of Claudius himself. Such divine honors, we have seen, had sometimes been accepted by his predecessors. Two miles of city walls and other relics dating from the period of the Roman occupation may still be seen at Colchester.
From Caius Caligula, Claudius had received an exhausted public treasury and empty granaries. Scanty harvests produced several periods of famine in different parts of the world. Secular historians say that one of these occurred in Palestine and Syria during his reign. We read in Acts ii, 28, how such a famine was predicted by the prophet Agabus at Antioch, so that the disciples there determined to send relief to their brethren in Judea, which they did by the hands of Barnabas and Saul; and the sacred writer says this famine occurred in the days of Claudius Cæsar. As one of the means for bringing Egyptian wheat to Rome more quickly, and thus preventing such periods of destitution of bread in the imperial city again, Claudius directed the building of a larger harbor at the mouth of the Tiber, an enterprise that required much massive masonry and which for a long while facilitated the commerce of the empire. In course of time the action of stream and wind and tide has filled up and wellnigh obliterated it. He also in seven years carried on to completion the mighty aqueduct for bringing water to Rome from the Alban hills,—an engineering achievement that has been always known as the Claudian Aqueduct. The traveler still wonders at its great arches stretching across the lonely Campagna. Tunneling a mountain to afford a better outlet for Lake Fucinus was another great piece of engineering in his day, the completion of which was fitly celebrated by naval evolutions and a sham battle on the Lake.
CLAUDIAN AQUEDUCT
If we could confine our view of Claudius to the facts now stated, we might think of him as one who in many respects quite disappointed the low estimate of him that the majority of men held at the beginning of his career. But, alas! his great weakness lay in his proneness to be too easily duped and controlled by others. This was specially marked in the influence over him of his vicious wives. The first lady who was betrothed to him in his youth was repudiated by him because she was not approved by the emperor Augustus. The next died on the day appointed for the nuptials. The third, named Urgalania, became the mother of two children. One of these was choked to death by a pear he tried to swallow. Afterward Claudius divorced this wife, having discovered that she was unfaithful; and he ordered her second child to be exposed to die. The next wife was also divorced as unsuitable. The last two were Messalina and Agrippina, both of whom, as we shall see, lived to acquire great infamy.
Messalina, the granddaughter of Mark Antony, was married to Claudius when he had no prospect of coming to the throne. She is said to have been at that time only fifteen years old. She became an intensely ambitious woman, of no moral principle. She was particularly jealous of Julia and Agrippina, the two nieces of the emperor, who, like herself, were brilliant but wicked women. She had no respect for her husband, and when he became emperor used her position to gain her personal ends. She was frightfully immoral. Her name, indeed, has become a byword for female depravity. She took bribes from others and wheedled presents from her husband.
After the accession of Claudius, the philosopher Seneca had emerged from the obscurity into which the jealousy of Caligula had forced him. It would have been well for his own peace of mind if he had continued to pursue his reflections in private. It has been well said that all Seneca gained for himself from his career of ambition at court was to be suspected by one emperor, banished by a second, and murdered by a third.
Claudius was not only under the influence of an infamous wife but he had also given himself largely to be controlled by certain evil men chosen from the ranks of freedmen. The lower class of Roman slaves had little hope of bettering their condition. But there was a higher class, principally from Greece and Syria, who were finely trained and educated, and who could calculate on obtaining their freedom early in life, when they might come into many opportunities of being the favorite employees, if not the intimate counselors, of their former masters and others. Some of them were shrewd enough to rise to great distinction and power and figure prominently upon the pages of history. In the court of Claudius there were several freedmen of this character. There were Narcissus, his private secretary; Polybius, his literary adviser, and Pallas, his accountant. We may also include another freedman of whom we read in Scripture, Felix, the brother of Pallas, who became the procurator of Judea, before whom the Apostle Paul was arraigned. The first three of these men, if not the fourth, became noted for their accumulation of great riches and for their insolence. Some scholars,—such as Lightfoot and Ramsey,—have thought that the Narcissus we here speak of was the man some of the slaves of whose household were known to the Apostle Paul to be Christians and secured from him greetings in Romans xvi, 11.
Narcissus, Polybius, and Pallas gradually came into control of the execution of the laws. Two of them, Narcissus and Pallas, acquired their wealth often by dishonest means. Once when Claudius complained that the imperial revenues were too small, it was replied that he would be rich enough if his two wealthy freedmen would take him into partnership. By their accusations they obtained from Claudius severe judgments on different individuals whom they hated. He was aroused by them to put down some conspiracies against his own person, but seems scarcely to have been aware of many evils that were flourishing while he was maintaining the routine of government or presiding at splendid banquets. At these he disgraced himself by gluttony and intemperance. A stolid worker in his prime, he became a stupid dotard in his age.
The Roman court had now become so degenerate that its record takes the form of a scandalous chronicle. It was surely a miserable place for a man to be found who put forth, as did Seneca, exalted apothegms of moral philosophy. Using opportunities for the investment of inherited wealth, he became extremely rich and, although he was one of the most enlightened men of his age, he had allowed himself to be placed in a most contaminating environment. Perhaps it was his detestation of the conduct of the empress that made him a partisan of her rivals, so that Messalina could find a pretext for accusing him of an intrigue with Julia. Julia was exiled and then put to death.