[10] Claudius, fifth Caesar, reigned 41-54 A.D. He was distinguished among the Roman emperors by his politic munificence in founding empires.
[11] Claudius determined to carry into effect the plan which Augustus had prematurely announced of an invasion of the great island of Britain. He conquered magnificently and was accorded a triumph at Rome.
[12] Referring probably to the construction of Portus Romanus and the extension of maritime power.
[13] Claudius was the first emperor who really conquered the Britains.
[14] Tiberius Claudius Drusus who succeeded Caligula obtained with his infant son the name of Britannicus in honor of his British victories. After the death of his third wife Messalina, he married his own niece Agrippina 49 A.D. She influenced him to set aside his own son Britannicus and to adopt her son Domitius Ahenobarbus giving him the name of Nero. Having afterward shown a disposition to return the succession to Britannicus, Claudius was poisoned by Agrippina 54. Britannicus was poisoned in 55 and Agrippina murdered in 59 by order of Nero.
[15] To Octavia her marriage was a funeral in a house where her father and soon afterward her brother had been poisoned, where a maid had become more powerful than her mistress, where a paramour had supplanted the lawful wife, and where she had been branded with a crime more hateful to her than the worst of deaths.
[16] Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and sister of Orestes. Her sad story has formed the basis of three extant plays, the Choephori of Aeschylus and the Electra of Sophocles and Euripides.
[17] Orestes.
[18] Lucan Bk I. 135.
[19] Sarcasm.