The Regime of Demetrius of Phalerum in Athens, 317-307 BCE: A Philosopher in Politics Book

Claudius - Born too late for bountiful booty

In this book, Barbara Levick offers a revisionist view of who Claudius was, moving away from the malicious words of Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio, instead relying on less biased evidence. The ancient view of Claudius depicts him as stupid, with his mother, according to Suetonius, calling him a 'monstrosity of a human being, one that Nature began and never finished'. Furthermore, he likely suffered from cerebral palsy, which affected his ability to speak. Seneca states that 'he had a cracked and hardly intelligible voice; it belonged to no land-animal, but the voice a sea-creature had', whilst Dio talks of an 'uncontrollable laughter', something which is associated with palsy. This speech impediment was made worse by the need for aristocracy to perform in public; 'Claudius used to give his speeches in the senate to his quaestor to read'. Claudius was not mentally backwards. He studied literature, rhetoric, music, mathematics, and jurisprudence, later writing twenty books on Etruscan history and eight on Carthaginian in Greek.

Nonetheless, Claudius' disability made it difficult for him to be seen as part of the family: 'Claudius finds a position here as a member of the family - a humiliating one between Germanicus' sister and children'. Coupled with the weak position of Emperor, and the need to relate oneself to Augustus, Claudius lacked the credibility and presentation to be seen as more than an necessary choice, which ultimately led to his assassination.