on provincial subjects, lends his pen to give expression to the exclusiveness of Roman aristocracy, is only discreditable to himself,

2

3

4

Colonisation, always a powerful engine in the Romanization of the empire, had been in abeyance since the days of Augustus, but now receives an energetic impulse. To Claudius the famous towns of Augusta Treverorum' (Trier or Treves) and, in his later years, Colonia Agrippinensis (Köln), and Camulodunum (Colchester) owed their status; while less celebrated instances such as Sabaria (Stein) in Pannonia, Aequum in Delmatia, Apri in Thrace, Iconium' in Lycaonia, Archelais in Cappadocia, Ptolemais (Acre) in Syria, and no less than six places (Tingi, Lixus, Iol or Caesarea, Oppidum Novum, Rusucurium, and Tipasa) either colonised or otherwise endowed with civic or Latin rights in the newly constituted provinces of Mauretania 10, show a steady purpose carried out in all parts of the empire.

5

The names assumed by towns, as Claudiopolis" (Bithynia and Cappadocia), Neo-Claudiopolis 12 (Galatia), Claudia Paphos 13 (Cyprus), seem to point to a gift of some favours or privileges which we cannot identify, as may also be the case with some of the many statues, medals, &c. belonging to this time, found in various places throughout the Roman world 14.

This sketch of the general policy at home and abroad, as initiated at the outset, and in many points consistently maintained throughout 15, will sufficiently support the credit for statesmanship which must be awarded to Claudius personally or shared by him with advisers 16 whom he had at least the good sense to follow; and will show how great deduction must be made from the representations of Roman satirists. Yet the satire is

should be noted in the above list that where we have only the name to go by, the foundation might equally have been due to Nero; but in most of the cases mentioned there are distinct grounds for assigning it to Claudius.

15 It will be seen from the references that several of the matters mentioned belong to the later period, covered by the extant Books of the Annals.

16 Among persons of the position of senators and statesmen, his most trusted adviser must have been L. Vitellius, a man of base character but of undoubted ability (see 6. 28, 1; 32, 5, etc.). Galba was also among his most intimate friends (Suet. Galb. 7); but it is impossible to distinguish their sphere of advice from that of his three great freedmen (see below, pp. 38, 39).

not without foundation in so far as the scheme of government was even at the outset impracticable or inconsistently carried out, and passed into a system showing manifold special vices of its own as time went on.

4

In the first place, it must have been plain to all who had insight, that the professed return to the Augustan idea of a dual government shared between the princeps and the senate was not really a bona fide restoration of what even at its best had been in many important points no more than a fiction1. The senate, shattered by a reign of terror of almost ten years' continuous duration 2, had neither the prestige nor the moral dignity to resume its lost position; nor have we any record of such discussion of public questions as is found in the best years of Tiberius 3, or even such as the policy of the early Neronian government and the independence of individual senators (as Thrasea") combined to realise for a short time afterwards. It was therefore no less perhaps from the necessity of the case than from the deliberate intention to encroach, that the political importance of the emperor's own functionaries is now so greatly augmented, and that from this period is mainly to be dated a new departure in the system of government, by which more and more of the work of the state is taken out of the hands of the senate and its magistrates, and knights, or freedmen, as ministers of the emperor and responsible to him alone, are found presiding over new departments of state at home, or with increased power and independence throughout the empire. Again, the circumstances under which Claudius had attained his power had stamped a character upon it and formed a precedent.

1 See Introd. I. vi. pp. 79-81.

2 Since the fall of Seianus there had been no respite, except the short reaction at the first accession of Gaius.

3 See 4. 6, 2, and note.

See 13. 4, 3, and note. 5 See 13. 49, 1, etc.

These changes are fully set forth in Hirschfeld's work (see especially the summary in p. 281 foll.). The great department a rationibus' has been already noticed (see above, p. 29): from this time dates also the great importance of those ab epistulis' and 'a libellis,' the former as that through which passed all despatches to or from generals and governors, the latter as the channel of all petitions. A procurator and staff replaces the 'quaestor Ostiensis' (Hirschf. p. 139), and probably the other quaestors with provinciae Italicae' (see 4. 27, 2, and note); other such officers relieve the quaestors of 'stratura viarum' (Hirschf. p. 152); functions hitherto belonging to senators pass to a 'praefectus cura

torum alvei Tiberis,' 'procurator ad ripas Tiberis,' and 'procurator aquarum' (Id. pp. 153, 163); and the increased supersession of other tribunals by that of the princeps brings in a 'procurator a cognitionibus' (Id. p. 208).

7 Besides the judicial powers given to 'procuratores rei familiaris' (12. 60), it is noticed that the procurators governing provinces become more numerous and less dependent. Hirschfeld thinks the procuratorship of Judaea (which was subordinate to the legatus of Syria) the only province thus definitely organised under Augustus (p. 288); and it is certain at any rate that the provinces under knights, even if not (as he thinks) mere military 'praefecturae' without civil jurisdiction, were, at first, few and unimportant (see Introd. i. vii. p. 99): under Claudius even the newly acquired and extensive provinces of Thracia and the two Mauretaniae were held by governors of this rank, and even a freedman (Felix) is procurator of Judaea.

Himself the most unmilitary of emperors, he owed his imperium to the soldiers' oath, in which the senate had afterwards acquiesced; and this subordination of the senatorial decree to the military praerogativa,' purchased by a lavish donative, is seen again at the accession of his successor1, and acquires a still more terrible prominence in later history. If again, as is probable, the military garrison of Rome was at this time substantially increased, the change must have been forced on the observation of all.

Nor were the character and surroundings of Claudius favourable to a permanent realisation of any good ideal of government, whether personal or constitutional, supposing him to have honestly contemplated it. Even the best side of his secluded life, his historical study, while it was in no respect a sufficient substitute for the great military achievements and important civil duties which had formed the training of Tiberius, had the positive fault of infecting his administration with the pedantry of a bookworm, and the vanity natural to one extolled by his courtiers as a miracle of learning and wisdom, and thus laid him fatally open to the assaults of pasquinade and satire. The Roman aristocrats, who cordially disliked the idea of admitting the natives of Gallia comata within their ranks, would gladly seize on the abundant ground of ridicule afforded by the rambling erudition with which the proposer obscured rather than illustrated the practical reasons for the change. The antiquarianism that could not be satisfied with the actual exercise of censorial powers, but must needs revive the censorship itself, could only bring out into stronger light the incongruities and inequalities of his action in the office ; while, in smaller matters, those who had their jest

4

1 Sententiam militum secuta patrum consulta' (12. 69, 3).

That the praetorian cohorts, which were nine in number under Tiberius (4. 5, 5), were not less than twelve in the time of Nero, is shown by the inscription to Gavius Silvanus, cited on 15. 50, 3. As the increase is not noted in any extant part of the Annals, it is suggested by Mommsen (Hermes, xvi. 643-647) that it was made by Claudius on his accession, in recognition of their services, and may have been mentioned in its place by Tacitus. He thinks it also probable that the urban cohorts, though they had not rendered similar service, became at the same time, perhaps, six. Their numbers are reckoned on continuously from those of the praetorian, and we find a Sixteenth urban cohort in an inscription of 819, A.D. 66 (Wilm. 1617), and it is suggested that the cohorts named as xvii

and xviii (H. I. 80, 1, and Med. text of H. 1. 64, 6) were urban. Of these, however, the former is generally taken to have been a 'cohors vigilum' (see Suet. Cl. 25); and in the latter place the text has generally been altered..

3 The prevailing tone of flattery may be judged from Seneca's Consolatio ad Polybium' (see above, p. 23).

See the fragments of the speech (Appendix to Book 11). A similarly disproportionate pedantic retrospect prefaces his real reason for granting immunity to the island of Cos (12. 61). The edict on the citizenship of the Anaunians, dated March 15, A.D. 46 (discovered in 1869), is noted by Mommsen (Hermes, iv. 99-131) as showing a similar pedantry in the strange grotesqueness of its style.

5 See note on II. 13, 1.

See Suet. Cl. 16, where account is

at the shortlived addition of letters to the alphabet', the affectation of archaic spelling, the attempt to rescue from deserved decay the obsolete lore of the aruspices, might also have the satisfaction of pointing out that their august professor did not after all know the ancient meaning of the term 'libertinus,' and had forgotten his own researches on the computation of an Etruscan saeculum "."

Again, much as we may set down to a conscientious intention to discharge a public duty, and to a desire of emulating Augustus, we must ascribe also in no small degree to vanity and self-conceit that passion for the personal exercise of judicial functions which all authorities attest, and which, notwithstanding the record that many of his decisions were shrewd and original, and that some of the principles of law embodied in his judgments or legislative enactments are quoted with approval long afterwards by juristic writers, could not have worked generally for the public benefit. Even in ordinary cases such encroachment by the princeps in Rome and by his procurators elsewhere on the ordinary tribunals was an injudicious weakening of their authority; nor could all the assiduity of Claudius prevent accumulation of arrears and harassing delays, shortened (if we are to believe our authors) by very summary modes of expedition "; while, in cases involving graver charges, a prince who centred in himself all functions of law and magistracy 12' was but calling into existence and enriching a crowd of accusers to whom condemnations and collusive acquittals alike were profitable 13. They felt they had only to study the humours of a single person, devoid of

3, 1; Cod. Just. 5. 30, 3.

10

10 On this extension of their jurisdiction towards the end of his rule, perhaps a consequence of the organisation of the 'fiscus' (p. 28), but prompted no doubt by his freedmen in the interest of their order, see 12. 60, and notes. It must have involved the evil of making the same person prosecutor and judge.

11 The statement of Suet. (1. 1.), ‘absentibus, secundum praesentes facillime dabat,' may perhaps be the sober truth under the satire of Seneca (Lud. 12. 3, 37; 14, 2), that he decided after hearing one side or often neither; which itself even is probable in an irresponsible judge, surrounded by courtiers applauding his acumen and despatch.

12

'Cuncta legum et magistratuum munia in se trahens princeps materiam praedandi patefecerat' (11. 5, 1).

13 On their venality, and the attack made upon them in the senate, see 11. 5-7.

mental equilibrium ', deciding without publicity and without appeal, and subject to opportunities of domestic pressure beyond anything which could be applied to even the most subservient senate 2. The result is a general sense of scandalous injustice, which it is one of the most popular acts of his successor to remove 3.

Nor was it only as an inspired judge or legislator, but also among the conquerors of the world, that his own vanity or the language of flatterers led him to aspire to fill a niche in history. That the British expedition should be commemorated in magniloquent words and stately memorials, and by claiming the right, so rarely exercised, to extend the 'pomerium', and that he should consider that his own campaign of sixteen days 5 entitled him to the honour of a full triumph, was perhaps to be expected: it is more characteristic of the man, that in the space of some twelve years he should have twenty-seven times received the title of 'imperator' for victories, many of which seem to defy all attempt at identification 8, and should have kept up the fiction of incessant military glories by the prodigality with which he showered triumphal distinctions on his subordinates. Other qualities resulting equally from his antecedents were still more mischievous.

It was a standing anomaly of the constitution that many offices which in a modern state would be important departments of the civil service were regarded as no more than posts in the chief citizen's household, unworthy of the dignity of any person above the rank of a freedman 1o. The consequent exaltation of the importance of persons of no recognised political status, checked at first by the aristocratic sympathies of Augustus and Tiberius ", and hardly gaining time for full growth under Gaius 12,

10 The chief instance is that of the three great departments (see above, p. 35) entrusted to Pallas, Narcissus, and Callistus (on whom see 11. 29, I, and note).

11 Cp. 4. 6, 7 ('modesta servitia, intra paucos libertos domus '), and note. Even under Tiberius a freedman became, at least for a time, praefect of Egypt (Dio, 58. 19,6); and instances occur, both under him and under Augustus, of vast wealth gained by freedmen of the imperial household: see Friedl. i. 76, 77.

12 Callistus had already attained under him a position of immense influence (Jos. Ant. 19. 1, 10).