CLAUDIUS

born Aug. 1, 10 BC, Lugdunum , Gaul died Oct. 13 AD 54 in full Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, original name (until AD 41) Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus Roman emperor (AD 4154), who extended Roman rule in North Africa and made Britain a province. the unscrupulous king of Denmark, stepfather of Prince Hamlet, and second husband to Queen Gertrude in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Cunning and politically savvy, Claudius represents blind ambition. Having murdered his brother and seduced and married his sister-in-law, he thinks his only domestic problems are with his weak but unpredictable nephew-stepson, Hamlet. Ultimately, however, Claudius' treacheries bring about the collapse of the kingdom and destroy the royal family. Additional reading The main sources are Tacitus, Annals xixii (for the years 4754); Dio Cassius, book 60; Suetonius, Divus Claudius (a good Latin commentary by Henricus Smilda, 1896); Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, book 19. These writers have common sources: probably historians contemporary with Claudius, such as Pliny the Elder and Cluvius Rufus. On this see Ronald Syme, Tacitus, 2 vol. (1958); and Ten Studies in Tacitus (1970). Inscriptions and papyri have been collected by E.M. Smallwood in Documents Illustrating the Principates of Gaius, Claudius and Nero (1967); papyri also in Corpus papyrorum judaicarum, vol. 2 with commentary (1960). Standard modern monographs include Arnaldo Momigliano, L'opera dell'imperatore Claudio (1932; Claudius: The Emperor and His Achievement, 1934, reprinted with up-to-date bibliography, 1962); M.P. Charlesworth and A.D. Nock in The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 10 (1934); Vincent M. Scramuzza, The Emperor Claudius (1940); and Albino Garzetti, L'impero da Tiberio agli Antonini (1960). The novels of Robert Graves, I, Claudius and Claudius, the God, and His Wife, Messalina (1934), draw from the traditions of the ancient historians.