Claudius Ptolemaeus

“ A little better is his contemporary, Rufius Festus Avienus, who made some free translations of astronomical and geographical poems in Greek. A generation later, in what might be called the expiring effort of Latin poetry, appeared two writers of much greater merit. The first is Claudius Claudianus (c. 400) , a native of Alexandria and the court poet of the emperor Honorius and his minister Stilicho. Claudian Claudian. may be properly styled the last of the poets of Rome. He breathes the old national spirit, and his mastery of classical idiom and versification is for his age extraordinary. ”

“ Claudius, terrified, looks round him for an advocate, but does not see one. Publius Petronius wants to plead for him, but is not allowed to do so. He is condemned. Deep silence falls on them all, as they wait to hear his punishment. It is to be as endless as that of Sisyphus, Tantalus, and Ixion; it is to be a toil and a desire futile and frustrate and without end. He is to throw dice forever in a dice-box without a bottom! ”

“ Claudius is exceedingly terrified.
Claudius was very much amazed, and was also exceedingly terrified at this communication. He trembled and turned pale, then looked wild and excited, and began to make inquiries in an incoherent and distracted manner. Calpurnia called in Cleopatra to confirm her story. Cleopatra did confirm it, of course, in the fullest and most unqualified manner. The effect which was produced upon the mind of the emperor seemed to be exactly what the conspirators had desired. ”

“ But their joint reign did not last long, for Ptolemy, or, rather, Pothinus and Achillas, his chief advisers, expelled his sister from the throne. Cleopatra collected a force in Syria, with which she invaded Egypt. The generals of Ptolemy were encamped opposite her, near Alexandria, when Pompey arrived off the coast and craved the protection of the young king. This request threw Pothinus and Achillas into great difficulty, for there were many of Pompey's old soldiers in the Egyptian army, and they feared he would become master of Egypt. They therefore determined to put him to death. ”

“ Claudius in the city of Antioch, for Saint Claudius spake to him boldly and fearlessly and reviled him. And Romanus advised Diocletian to send Saint Claudius to the country of Egypt, and to kill him there, [saying,] “He is a heretic like my son Victor.” And the emperor wrote a letter to the governor of Antinoe, saying, “Claudius will accept [nothing] from us, and he will neither hearken to our words nor obey them. Do thou persuade him with all thy power to return to his allegiance to us, and if he will not do so cut off his head with the sword.” ”

“ Accordingly, an army was sent over, under the command of Aulus Plautius, an able general, who defeated the natives in several engagements, and penetrated a considerable way into the country. Preparations for the emperor's voyage now being made, Claudius set sail from Ostia, at the mouth of (334) the Tiber; but meeting with a violent storm in the Mediterranean, he landed at Marseilles, and proceeding thence to Boulogne in Picardy, passed over into Britain. In what part he debarked, is uncertain, but it seems to have been at some place on the south-east coast of the island. ”

“ He mentions the murder of his father-in-law Silanus, and his two sons-in-law Silanus and Pompeius, and the father-in-law of his daughter, and the mother-in-law of the same, of his wife Messallina, and of others more than can be named.
The gods are struck with amazement and indignation. Claudius is repelled from the threshold of Olympus, and led by Mercury to the shades below. As he passes along the Via Sacra he witnesses the pageant of his own obsequies, and then first apprehends the fact of his decease. ”

“ Jupiter, who has reigned so many years, has only broken one leg—the leg of Vulcan—and has once hung Juno from heaven: but Claudius, inspired by female jealousies and the intrigues of a varletry of pampered freedmen, has killed his wife, Messalina, and a multitude of others. Who would believe that they were gods, if they made this portent a god? Rather let him be expelled from Olympus within three days.’
Accordingly, Mercury puts a rope round his neck, and drags him towards Tartarus. On the way they meet a vast crowd, who all rejoice except a few lawyers. ”

“ While the Senate deliberated, the prætorian guards acted.
Claudius. Among the inmates of the palace, in that hour of fear, among slaves and freed men, half hidden behind a curtain in an obscure corner, was a timid old man, who was dragged forth with brutal violence. He was no less a personage than Claudius, the neglected uncle of the emperor, the son of Drusus and Antonia, and nephew of Tiberius, and brother of Germanicus. Instead of slaying the old man, the soldiers, respecting the family of Cæsar, hailed him, partly in jest, as imperator, and carried him to their camp. ”

“ LXXVII. Accordingly when the proposal to fly to [Pg 291] Egypt prevailed, Pompeius setting sail from Cyprus in a galley of Seleukeia [390] with his wife (and of the rest some accompanied him also in ships of war, and others in merchant vessels) , crossed the sea safely; and hearing that Ptolemæus [391] was seated before Pelusium with his army, being engaged in war against his sister, he came to that part of the coast and sent forward a person to announce his arrival to the king and to pray for his protection. ”

“ There was scarcely a man in Rome who did not seem, by the voice of fame and the wishes of the people, designed for the sovereign power, rather than the very person whom Fate cherished in obscurity in order to make him, at a future period, master of the Roman world." [1]
Yet Claudius, in intention, was not among the bad Cæsars. Had he met with honest friends, and had he not been misguided by his freedmen and his wives, Messalina and the younger Agrippina, his rule might have been happy for his subjects and creditable to himself. ”

“ But the most complete picture of his state of mind, and the most melancholy memorial of his inconsistency as a philosopher, is to be found in his "Consolation to Polybius." Polybius was one of those freedmen of the Emperor whose bloated wealth and servile insolence were one of the darkest and strangest phenomena of the time. Claudius, more than any of his class, from the peculiar imbecility of his character, was under the powerful influence of this class of men ”

“ We are as much slaves as the poor creatures down in the royal quarries; only we demand the right to riot and give nicknames. We called the last Ptolemæus, Auletes "the Piper," because in that way we have punished him in all history for the way he oppressed us. Euge! Have we not a wonderful city!"
It was on the very next day that Cleopatra was recalled to Cornelia's mind in a quite marked fashion. ”

“ On seeing, as Lucan says, the civil wars giving peers to the inhabitants of heaven, and Rome tricking out shades with thunderbolts and shooting stars and swearing by the shadows in the temples of the god, what could men think, but that Jupiter and his fellows had the same title to our adoration as Caligula and Tiberius? Claudius, the learned but imbecile pupil of Titus Livius, was perhaps the only Roman who was devoted to the gods of the empire. Politics saw in religion nothing but fraudulous inventions to deceive and coerce the people ”

“ The king, seeing the danger of connecting himself with such a man, kept up every appearance of attachment to the Alexandrian church. Yet, says the Abyssinian historian who writes his life, it was well known that Claudius, in his heart, was a private, but perfect convert, to the Romish faith, and kept only from embracing it by his hatred to Bermudes, the constant persuasion of the empress Sabel Wenghel, and the recollection of the misfortunes of his father. ”

“ No further offerings or libations expect from me; these are the last honors that Cleopatra can pay your memory, for she is to be hurried away far from you. Nothing could part us whilst we lived, but death seems to threaten to divide us. You, a Roman born, have found a grave in Egypt; I, an Egyptian, am to seek that favor, and none but that, in your country. But if the gods below, with whom you now are, either can or will do anything (since those above have betrayed us) , suffer not your living wife to be abandoned ”

“ When she came to Egypt, and understood that Ptolemy entertained proposals and overtures of peace from Antigonus, and that Cleomenes, though the Achaeans invited and urged him to an agreement, was afraid, for her sake, to come to any, without Ptolemy's consent, she wrote to him, advising him to do that which was most becoming and most profitable for Sparta, and not, for the sake of an old woman and a little child, stand always in fear of Ptolemy. ”

“ Ptolemæus II., son of Ptolemy I., succeeded his father on the Egyptian throne, and was called Philadelphus by antiphrasis, because he killed two of his brothers. He showed himself worthy in every respect to succeed his great father, and, conscious of the advantages which arise from an alliance with powerful nations, he sent ambassadors to Italy to solicit the friendship of the Romans, whose name and military reputation had become universally known for the victories which they had just obtained over Pyrrhus and the Tarentines. ”

“ The most brilliant undertakings, as it were, offered themselves to him on all sides; he was free to start for the Cimmerian Bosporus and for the Red Sea; he had opportunity of declaring war against the Parthians; the revolted provinces of Egypt invited him to dethrone king Ptolemaeus who was not recognized by the Romans, and to carry out the testament of Alexander; but Pompeius marched neither to Panticapaeum nor to Petra, neither to Ctesiphon nor to Alexandria ”

“ They had likewise ever been remarkably fond of stage-plays and public shows, with which, as well as with scrambles, and donations of bread and other victuals, the preceding emperor had frequently gratified them. They had therefore less to fear, and more to hope, from the government of a single person than any other class of Roman citizens. With regard to the partiality for Claudius, it may be accounted for partly from the low habits of life to which he had been addicted, in consequence of which many of them were familiarly acquainted with him ”

“ PETRONIUS was a Roman knight, and apparently of considerable fortune. In his youth he seems to have given great application to polite literature, in which he acquired a justness of taste, as well as an elegance of composition. Early initiated in the gaieties (393) of fashionable life, he contracted a habit of voluptuousness which rendered him an accommodating companion to the dissipated and the luxurious. The court of Claudius, entirely governed for some time by Messalina, was then the residence of pleasure; and here Petronius failed not of making a conspicuous appearance. ”

“ We hear nothing of his doings between the first battle against Aulus Plautius, when his brother Togodumnus fell, leaving him the sole heir of Cymbeline, until we find him here. But we may be pretty sure that he was the animating spirit of the resistance which so long checked the conquerors on the banks of the Thames, and that he took no part in the general submission to Claudius. Probably he led an outlaw life in the forest, stirring up all possible resistance to the Roman arms, till finally he found himself left with this one clan of all his father's subjects still remaining faithful. ”

“ It has been already observed, that Claudius was entirely governed by his freedmen; a class of retainers which enjoyed a great share of favour and confidence with their patrons in those times. They had before been the slaves of their masters, and had obtained their freedom as a reward for their faithful and attentive services. Of the esteem in which they were often held, we meet with an instance in Tiro, the freedman of Cicero, to whom that illustrious Roman addresses several epistles, written in the most familiar and affectionate strain of friendship. ”

“ Happy is the day wherein thou didst return to the land of thy fathers, and sattest in the throne of their kingdom.
56 And now I will do to thee as thou hast written: but meet me at Ptolemais, that we may see one another, and I may give her to thee as thou hast said.
57 So Ptolemee went out of Egypt, with Cleopatra his daughter, and he came to Ptolemais in the hundred and sixty-second year.
58 And king Alexander met him, and he gave him his daughter Cleopatra: and he celebrated her marriage at Ptolemais, with great glory, after the manner of kings. ”

“ Before Claudius, likewise, at the time he was consul, he made a speech for the Bolognese, in Latin, and for the Rhodians and people of Ilium, in Greek. He had the jurisdiction of praefect of the city, for the first time, during the Latin festival; during which the most celebrated advocates brought before him, not short and trifling causes, as is usual in that case, but trials of importance, notwithstanding they had instructions from Claudius himself to the contrary. Soon afterwards, he married Octavia, and exhibited the Circensian games, and hunting of wild beasts, in honour of Claudius. ”

“ During his long exile in Corsica he could write a consolatory treatise to his mother on the thesis that the true philosopher is never an exile; [144] wherever he is, there he is at home; but little more than a year later he writes another consolatory treatise to the imperial freedman Polybius, full of the most grovelling flattery of Polybius himself and of the Emperor Claudius, [145] the same Claudius whom he afterwards bespattered with the coarse, if occasionally humorous, vulgarity of the Apocolocyntosis. [146] He was tutor to the young Nero, but had not the strength to check his vices. ”