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the whole military force was retained for its protection. The Second Legion held the country which it had conquered in the West; but it is not clear whether its head-quarters were yet fixed at the great station of Isca Silurum (Caerleon),* on the river of the same name (the Usk). The Ninth, quartered among the Iceni, kept watch over the doubtful fidelity of that people, as well as against the still hostile Brigantes beyond the Wash, who were confronted at the opposite extremity of their wide territory by the Twentieth Legion, whose camp upon the Dee grew into one of the most interesting of the Roman cities in our island.† The Fourteenth Legion was occupied in completing the reduction of North Wales, where its progress drove back the more resolute patriots, with the proscribed Druids, both of Gaul and Britain, to their last refuge in the dense forests of Anglesey.

The conquest of Southern Britain was not the only memorable event in the provincial government of Claudius, which was distinguished also for the number and splendour of his colonies on the frontier, and by his patronage of the petty princes of the East. Antiochus was restored to the kingdom of Commagene, Mithridates to that of Pontus, and Herod Agrippa to the throne of Judæa; but the history of this country is reserved for another chapter. At home, Claudius endeavoured, so far as his feeble character and the evil influences about him would permit, to imitate the policy of Augustus in raising the dignity of the Senate, recruiting its numbers from the most distinguished of the provincials, especially from his native land of Gaul, the nobles of which were admitted to the Roman magistracies ;-in his regulation of the national religion;-his regularity and firmness in the administration of justice ;—and in the splendour and utility of his public works. Of these, the most remarkable were the Claudian aqueduct, already begun by Caius; § the new Augustan

That is, the Camp of the Legion. In the same way, the city of Leon in Spain derived its name from the Legio VII. Gemina, which was stationed there to command the Astures.

+ Deva, now Chester, a name which, with its compounds, as Col-chester, Chi-chester, Ciren-cester, is a sure mark of the site of a Roman camp, castra.

Such as Augusta Trevirorum (Treves) on the Moselle, and Colonia Claudia Augusta Agrippinensis (Cologne) on the Rhine, the latter named in honour of his wife Agrippina.

§ This aqueduct, in the form in which it entered Rome, was the combination of two, the Aqua Claudia and the Anio Novus. The former was brought from a distance of about forty-five Roman miles, and the latter had a course of nearly fifty-nine. Near the city they were raised on a common substruction of arches, one channel over the other; and of this portion we have a splendid remnant in the double archway now called Porta Maggiore.-(See p. 400.)

or Roman Harbour at the mouth of the Tiber, which enabled the corn ships again to sail up to Rome, after being long used to unload at Puteoli, in consequence of the silting up of the port of

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long, which provided an outlet for the surplus waters of the Fucine lake in the Marsian hills. The mimic sea-fight on the lake, by which the completion of this work was celebrated, afforded the populace of Rome, who witnessed it by imperial invitation, a novel change from the spectacles of the amphitheatre, which Claudius provided on a grander scale than any of his predecessors, and honoured more regularly by his pre

sence.

In all this there were proofs at least of good intentions, which in a man of more energy and self-reliance, and trained from his

youth to the duties of empire, might have been crowned with success. But the very exertions which Claudius made seem to have had an unfavourable re-action on his natural tendency to coarse sensual pleasures. In the scandalous chronicles of the empire, Claudius is conspicuous for his disgusting gluttony; but taking into account the constant exaggeration of such writers as Suetonius, we may believe that, "of all the Cæsars, Claudius stands, on the whole, the most nearly free from the charge of illicit and disgraceful indulgences." But it was his fate to have wives whose influence was more fatal than that of other princes' mistresses; and what remains to be told of his reign consists almost entirely of the intrigues of these abandoned women, and of the freedmen who shared and disputed their influence over the feeble and irresolute old man. At the time of his accession,

Claudius had recently married his third wife, Valeria Messalina, who bore him a son, born in A.D. 41, and named Britannicus, and a daughter Octavia. She was conspicuous for her profligacy even in an age which seemed to have forgotten every vestige of the fame of the old Roman matrons; and, from the moment of her husband's accession, she sought to establish her power at court by a guilty league with Polybius and Narcissus, the Greek freedmen and ministers of the emperor, who appears to have been completely deceived. Her influence was seen in the second banishment of Julia, the sister of Caligula,* as well as of the philosopher SENECA, of whom we shall soon have to speak again (A.D. 41). With the aid of Narcissus, Messalina extorted from the fears of Claudius the condemnation and death of a most distinguished Senator, Appius Junius Silanus, whom the emperor had chosen for the honour of a double connection by marriage with the imperial family; and the abortive conspiracy of Scribonianus, provoked by this and similar cruelties, was made the occasion of a series of executions. This reign of terror is memorable for the affecting deaths of Pætus and his wife Arria, who, when her husband shrunk from the deed of self-destruction, to which he was doomed by Claudius, stabbed herself first, and then handed him the dagger, saying calmly, "Pætus, it does not pain me" (A.D. 42). After the return of Claudius from Britain, he was still so blind to his wife's conduct or so besotted by her influence, that he commanded the Senate to confer upon her the same honours that Livia had shared with Augustus, while she plunged into hideous excesses, only paralleled in history by those of Catherine of Russia. The partners of her guilt, who might at any moment become her betrayers, were bribed with wealth obtained by fresh judicial murders, of which that of the consul Valerius Asiaticus was among the worst (A.D. 46).

It was amidst such scenes as these that Claudius celebrated the Secular Games, on the completion of the eighth century from the foundation of the city (A.D. 47);† and a representation of the

One of the first acts of Claudius was the recal of Julia and her more celebrated sister Agrippina, the daughters of Germanicus.

In this year Claudius took a census of the empire, which gave the sum of 5,984,072 males of the military age, corresponding to a total population of 25, 419,066. In A.D. 13, the number was 4,897,000, corresponding to a population of 17,400,000. The immense increase was chiefly due to the extension of the citizenship to whole communities as well as individuals. The franchise, of which Augustus had been so chary, was made the object of traffic, if not by Caius and Claudius themselves, certainly by their ministers and favourites; and people were ready to pay for an honour which exempted them from the poll and land tax. "The sale of the franchise by the

VOL. III.

D D

Game of Troy by the noblest Roman youths introduced to the notice of the people the emperor's son Britannicus, then in his seventh year, and the young Lucius Domitius, the son of Agrippina by her deceased husband, and consequently the grandson of Germanicus, whose virtues the people were ready to believe revived in the beautiful boy of ten years old, the future NERO. The marks of public favour showered upon him, and withheld from Britannicus, must have inflamed the mutual hatred of Messalina and Agrippina; and the Roman empire was degraded another step towards the likeness of an eastern despotism when the court became the scene of female rivalry. The repulsive details of their intrigues are the less deserving of our notice, as the historians recorded them chiefly on the authority of the Memoirs of Agrippina herself. Thus much seems clear, that Messalina at last quarrelled with the freedmen, and procured the ruin of Polybius, a victory which drove the other favourites into a close league with Agrippina. Messalina herself gave them the opportunity of effecting her destruction by her infatuated love for a noble Roman, C. Silius, who endeavoured to fix her inconstant affections by marriage, which was to be followed by the assumption of the supreme power in the name of Britannicus. The incredible story, vouched for by the authority of Tacitus-that a formal marriage actually took place without the emperor's knowledge-is explained by the modern historian from a hint supplied by Suetonius. The common form of the story represents Claudius as receiving the news at Ostia, and returning to Rome in a transport of rage, which Narcissus contrived to keep at its height till the doom of Silius was pronounced, and his fate was shared by numbers of his

emperor," says Mr. Merivale, "was in fact no other than the spendthrift's economy; it was living upon the capital of the state."

* "Claudius, it is suggested, had been assured by the diviners, that evil was about to befall the husband of Messalina. His feeble mind was the victim of the superstitions, from which few indeed of his class were wholly exempt. He conceived the idea of evading his impending fate by marrying his wife to another man. It was rumoured, accordingly, that the nuptials of Silius were actually of the emperor's own contrivance; that he, in fact, not only recommended and urged them, but, fearing lest his crafty scheme should by any means be frustrated, actually assisted at the ceremony, and himself signed the deed as a witness to its legal completion. It is not mentioned, indeed, but of this there can be no reasonable doubt, that he had previously divorced his wife in due form, in order to make her new marriage legitimate. scandalmongers of the day, the parasites of Claudius, the foes of Messalina,-above all, Agrippina herself, in her Memoirs, -may have combined, each for reasons of their own, to heighten the colouring of the story by dropping this essential feature in it." (Merivale, Vol. v. p. 555-6.)

The

alleged accomplices and of the other paramours of Messalina. She herself had boldly gone, with Britannicus and Octavia, to meet her incensed husband, and Narcissus had only succeeded in obtaining her dismissal with the emperor's promise that she should be heard in her own defence. The maudlin compassion to which Claudius gave vent the same evening in his cups added a new alarm to confirm the freedman's resolution, that the hearing should not take place; and he sent some officers to despatch her, on pretext of the emperor's command. Messalina had retired to the gardens of Lucullus with her mother Lepida, who urged her, as life was over, to make a decent exit from it; but she lacked courage for the fatal blow, which one of the soldiers at length inflicted, after overwhelming her with reproaches. Claudius received the news while he was still at table, without interrupting his deep drinking, nor did he afterwards show any emotion. The Senate, however, stamped the deed with approval, by ordering the name of Messalina to be erased from the public monuments, and Narcissus was rewarded with the quæstorship (A.D. 48).

The emperor's ministers were divided on the choice of a successor to Messalina: but the claims of Agrippina prevailed, and, after a solemn debate, a decree of the Senate set aside the ancient principle of religion, which even the reckless profligacy of that age had not yet infringed, by sanctioning the marriage of an uncle to a niece, with the loud approval of the people who surrounded the Senate-house. "The authority of the Senate and the licence of the Cæsar to create law and right of their own sovereign will, were thus established with the concurrence of the people, and to their entire satisfaction; yet the authority and licence were shared by these still co-ordinate powers; it remained yet to be seen whether either could destroy the other, or continue to exist without it" (Merivale). The marriage of Claudius and Agrippina was soon followed by the betrothal of Octavia, the emperor's daughter, to L. Domitius, the son of the empress, a union doubly incestuous in Roman eyes, as being with a cousin and a step-brother.* Claudius was persuaded to follow the example of Tiberius in associating with his son an elder and more popular kinsman, and Domitius was adopted by the name of NERO Claudius Cæsar Drusus Germanicus (A.D. 50). The elevation of the grandson of Germanicus was rendered doubly popular by the step of entrusting his education to the philosopher Seneca, who had been recalled from exile by the influence of Agrippina; while Britannicus, sur* The marriage took place in .. D. 53.

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