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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: CHR-CLI |
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CLAUDIUS , the name of a famous Roman gens. The by-form Clodius, in its origin a mere orthographical variant, was regularly used for certain Claudii in late republican times, but otherwise the two forms were used indifferently. The gens contained a patrician and a plebeian family; the chief
1. APPIUS SABINUS INREGILLENSIS, Or REGILLENSIS, CLAUDIUS, so called from Regillum (or Regilli) in Sabine territory, founder of the Claudian gens. His original name was Attus or Attius Clausus. About 504 B.C. he settled in Rome, where he and his followers formed a tribe. In 495 he was consul
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Suetonius, Tiberius, i.; Livy ii. 16-29; Dion. Halic. v. 40, vi. 23, 24. 2. CLAUDIUS, APPIus, surnamed CRASSUS, a Roman patrician, consul
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Livy iii. 32-58; Dion. Halic. x. 59, xi. 3. 3. CLAUDIUS, Anplus, surnamed CAECUS, Roman patrician and author. In 312 B.C. he was elected censor without having passed through the office of consul. His censorshipwhich he retained for five years, in spite of the lex Aemilia which limited the tenure of that office to eighteen monthswas remarkable for the actual or attempted achievement of several great constitutional changes. He filled vacancies in the senate with men of low birth, in some cases even the sons of freedmen (Diod. Sic. xx. 36; Livy ix. 3o; Suetonius, Claudius, 24). His most important political innovation was the abolition of the old free birth, freehold basis of suffrage. He enrolled the freedmen and landless citizens both in the centuries and in the tribes, and, instead of assigning them to the four urban tribes, he distributed them through all the tribes and thus gave them practical control of the elections. In 304, however, Q. Fabius Rullianus limited the landless and poorer freedmen to the four urban tribes, thus annulling the effect of Claudius's arrangement. Appius Claudius transferred the charge of the public worship of Hercules in the Forum Boarium from the Potitian gens to a number of public slaves. He further invaded the exclusive rights of the patricians by directing his secretary Gnaeus Flavius (whom, though a freedman, he made a senator) to publish the legis actiones (methods of legal practice) and the list
magistrate . He was already blind and too feeble to walk, when Cineas, the minister of Pyrrhus, visited him, but so vigorously did he oppose every concession that all the eloquence of Cineas was in vain, and the Romans forgot past misfortunes in the inspiration of Claudius's patriotism (Livy x. 13; Justin xviii. 2; Plutarch, Pyrrhus, 19). The story of his blindness, however, may be merely a method ofaccounting for his cognomen. Tradition regarded it as the punishment of his transference of the cult of Hercules from the Potitii. Appius Claudius Caecus is also remarkable as the first writer mentioned in Roman literature. His speech against peace with Pyrrhus was the first that was transmitted to writing, and thereby laid the foundation of prose composition. He was the author of a collection of aphorisms in verse mentioned by Cicero (of which a few fragments remain), and of a legal work entitled De Usurpationibus. It is very likely also that he was concerned in the drawing up of the Legis Actiones published by Flavius. The famous dictum " Every man is the architect of his own fortune " is attributed to him. He also interested himself in grammatical questions, distinguished the two sounds R and S in writing, and ,did away with the letter Z. See Mommsen's appendix to his Roman History (vol. i.) ; treatises by W. Siebert (1863) and F. D. Gerlach (1872), dealing especially with the censorship of Claudius. 4. CLAUDIUS, PuBLrus, surnamed PULCHER, son of (3). He was the first of the gens who bore this surname. In 249 he was consul and appointed to the command of the fleet in the first Punic War. Instead of continuing the siege of Lilybaeum, he decided to attack the Carthaginians in the harbour of Drepanum, and was completely defeated. The disaster was commonly attributed to Claudius's treatment of the sacred chickens, which refused to eat before the battle. " Let them drink then," said the consul, and ordered them to be thrown into the sea. Having been recalled and ordered to appoint a dictator, he gave another instance of his high-handedness by nominating a subordinate official, M. Claudius Glicia, but the nomination was at once over-ruled. Claudius himself was accused of high treason and heavily fined. He must have died before 246, in which year his sister Claudia was fined for publicly expressing a wish that her brother Publius could rise from the grave to lose a second fleet and thereby diminish the number of the people. It is supposed that he committed suicide. Livy, Epit., 19; Polybius
5. CLAUDIUS, Appms, surnamed PULCHER, Roman statesman and author. He served under his brother-in-law Lucullus in Asia (72 B.C.) and was commissioned to deliver the ultimatum to Tigranes, which gave him the choice of war with Rome or the surrender of Mithradates. In 57 he was praetor, in 56 pro-praetor in Sardinia, and in 54 consul with L. Domitius Ahenobarbus. - Through the intervention of Pompey, he became reconciled to Cicero, who had been greatly offended because Claudius had indirectly opposed his return from exile . In this and certain other transactions Claudius seems to have acted from avaricious motives,a result of his early poverty. In 53 he entered upon the governorship of Cilicia, in which capacity he seems to have been rapacious and tyrannical. During this period he carried on a correspondence with Cicero, whose letters to him form the third book of the Epistolae ad Familiares. Claudius resented the appointment of Cicero as his successor, avoided meeting him, and even issued orders after his arrival in the province. On his return to Rome Claudius was impeached by P. Cornelius Dolabella on the ground of having violated the sovereign rights of the people. This led him to make advances to Cicero, since it was necessary to obtain witnesses in his favour from his old province. He was acquitted, and a charge of bribery against him also proved unsuccessful. In 50 he was censor, and expelled many of the members of the senate, amongst them the historian Sallust on the ground of immorality. His connexion with Pompey brought upon him the enmity of Caesar, at whose march on Rome he fled from Italy. Having been appointed by Pompey to the command in Greece, in obedience to an ambiguous oracle he crossed over to Euboea, where he died about 48, before the battle of Pharsalus. Claudius was of a distinctly religious turn of mind, as is shown by the interest
A full account of all the Claudii will be found in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, iii. 2 (1899). End of Article: CLAUDIUS If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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