Claudius Ptolemy

“ All his affections that were not centered upon self, rested upon his child. The beauty, the talents, the lovely disposition of Lucius had endeared him to the heart of the dissipated parent, who was proud that such a scion should be destined to carry the name of the Claudii down to posterity. Destined to prolong thy name and lineage, Julius Claudius? Oh no! a fairer inheritance is given to the young heir of thy honours, even one “that fadeth not away.” ”

“ He forces the son to assist at the torment of his father and the husband the violation of his wife, and to laugh. Claudius is a mere sketch of a ruler. He is nearly a man made a tyrant, a noodle-head crowned. He hides himself; they discover him, they drag him from his hole, and they throw him terrified on the throne. Emperor, he still trembles, having the crown but not sure that he has his head. He feels for his head at times, as if he searched for it. ”

“ It was about this time that the Emperor Claudius came to Britain, and his generals won all the southern part of the island, rooting out the cruel worship of the Druids in their groves of oak, and circles of huge stones. He died in the year 55, and was succeeded by his step-son, Nero, a half-mad tyrant, who used to show off like a gladiator; racing in a chariot before all the Romans at the games, collecting them all to listen to his verses, and putting those to death who showed their weariness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ It was an age of materialism, and there was no possibility that the images could remain in churches without the people worshipping them, or that if they worshipped them they would understand the nice distinction between this worship and that of God laid down by the second Nicene council. [18] Claudius denounces this inevitable polytheism. If, he says, they worship the images of saints after the fashion of demons, - that is, of course, in the manner of the old gods of the country, - they have not left idols but changed their names. [19] He was accused of inventing a new heresy. ”

“ And Rome may bear the pride of him of whom herself is proud.
But evermore a Claudius shrinks from a stricken field,
And changes color like a maid at sight of sword and shield.
The Claudian triumphs all were won within the city towers;
The Claudian yoke was never pressed on any necks but ours.
A Cossus, like a wild cat, springs ever at the face;
A Fabius rushes like a boar against the shouting chase;
But the vile Claudian litter, raging with currish spite,
Still yelps and snaps at those who run, still runs from those who smite. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the first time in his life Julius Claudius heard the gospel preached fully, faithfully, preached not only as a message of love, but of wrath to the disobedient and impenitent sinner. To the conscience-stricken Roman patrician the word of God was sharper than a two-edged sword, compelling him to disclose every secret of his guilty breast. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ When it was decided to elect decemvirs for another year, he who had formerly been looked upon as the champion of the aristocracy, suddenly came forward as the friend of the people, and was himself re-elected together with several plebeians. But no sooner was the new body in office, than it treated both patricians and plebeians with equal violence, and refused to resign at the end of the year. Matters were brought to a crisis by the affair of Virginia. Enamoured of the beautiful daughter of the plebeian centurion Virginius, Claudius attempted to seize her by an abuse of justice. ”

“ They were all so absorbed that they did not hear loud shouts and cries outside, nor notice the entrance into the chapel of a little band of well-armed strangers, nor hear the call of 'Sir Claudius! Sir Claudius!' from the yard. Least of all did the bridegroom hear the tumult, for he was exerting himself to smother my remonstrances and compel me to take part in the service.
'Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?' asked the clergyman in quavering, uncertain tones. He was weak and old, in terror of Sir Claudius, and more than half persuaded that he had misunderstood me. ”

“ Then she declared that she was resolved to continue in celibacy, loving none save Jesus. Claudius was surprised {330} and alarmed, for the request of an emperor is the same as a command. He had already received some Christian teaching from his brothers, the bishop and the priest, and now was fully convinced of the power of that religion which could make a young girl reject a princely lover and the prospect of a throne, with every prospect of death as an alternative. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That the judgment of one from whom the practical knowledge of men and things had been withheld was not equal to his learning, and that the infirmities of his body affected his powers of decision, his presence of mind, and steadfastness of purpose, may easily be imagined: nevertheless, it may be allowed that in a private station, and anywhere but at Rome, Claudius would have passed muster as a respectable, and not, perhaps, an useless member of society. ”

“ Only students and artists and an occasional sturdy English climber used to go to Pontresina, while all Europe congregated at St. Moritz half a dozen miles away. He would go there as he went everywhere, with a knapsack and a thick stick and a few guldens in his pocket, and be happy, if so be that he had any capacity for enjoyment left in him.
"It is absurd," said Claudius to himself, argumentatively. "I am barely thirty years old, as strong as an ox, and I have just inherited more money than I know what to do with, and I feel like an old cripple of ninety, who has nothing left to live for. ”

“ If matters had come to such a pass that a Claudius, a man whose name had for so many centuries spelt to the Romans all the austere and traditional virtues of the Roman citizenship of old, dared profane the most sacred rites of religion, what might not be feared at the hands of a creedless, dissolute, corrupt youth, which was preparing to invade, with the new generation, the official posts of the Republic? ”

“ Secondly, That the Fathers of the Assembly of Paris, in the year 825, had justified most of the principles maintained by Claudius, this great man having been only engaged to carry the matter farther than they; for being nearer to the diocese of Rome, he saw the danger so much the nearer, in which his flock were, of falling into idolatry. ”

“ Claudius, I think often of all the great dead, the old Greeks, their brave soldiers, their wise philosophers, Socrates and Plato, Aristides and Themistocles. Their poets and their heroes, all alike gone—gone as the man yesterday went on the hill-top—gone, and whither? If it be true that there is another life, what is that life? I torture myself [51] with questions, and I know that if I were led out to die as Alban was, I should shiver and tremble, aye, and pray for mercy. ”

“ Verily the lawyers in New York say well, that I am not Claudius. Claudius was a thing of angles and books, mathematical and earthy, believing indeed in the greatness of things supernal, but not having tasted thereof. My beloved, God has given me a new soul to love you with, so great that it seems as though it would break through the walls of my heart and cry aloud to you. This new Claudius is a man of infinite power to rise above earthly things, above everything that is below you—and what things that are in earth are not below you, lady mine? ”

“ And Claudius advanced him to the dignity of a patrician, commending him, at the same time, in the highest terms, and concluding with these words: “A man, than whom I don’t so (417) much as wish to have children that should be better.” ”

“ The Countess introduced the two men, who bowed low, and they all sat down, Mr. Barker on the bench by the ancient virgin, and Claudius on the grass at Margaret's feet. It was noonday, but there was a light breeze through, the flowers and grasses. The conversation soon fell into pairs as they sat.
"I should not have said, at first sight, that you were a very imaginative person, Dr. Claudius," said the Countess.
"I have been dreaming for years," he answered. "I am a mathematician, and of late I have become a philosopher in a small way, as far as that is possible from reading the subject. ”