Nero Claudius Quotes

I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot", or "That Claudius", or "Claudius the Stammerer", or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius", am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled.

After a war of about 40 years, undertaken by the most stupid [Claudius], maintained by the most dissolute [Nero], and terminated by the most timid [Domitian] of all the emperors, the far greater part of the island [of Britain] submitted to the Roman yoke.

Even as a young officer he was such a hard drinker that his name, Tiberius Claudius Nero, was displaced by the nickname ‘Biberius Caldius Mero’—meaning: ‘Drinker of wine with no water added’.

And what thoughts or memories, would you guess, were passing through my mind on this extraordinary occasion? Was I thinking of the Sibyl's prophecy, of the omen of the wolf-cub, of Pollio's advice, or of Briseis's dream? Of my grandfather and liberty? Of my grandfather and liberty? Of my three Imperial predecessors, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, their lives and deaths? Of the great danger I was still in from the conspirators, and from the Senate, and from the Gaurds battalions at the Camp? Of Messalina and our unborn child? Of my grandmother Livia and my promise to deify her if I ever became Emperor? Of Postumus and Germanicus? Of Agrippina and Nero? Of Camilla? No, you would never guess what was passing through my mind. But I shall be frank and tell you what it was, though the confession is a shameful one. I was thinking, 'So, I'm Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now. Public recitals to large audiences. And good books too, thirty-five years' hard work in them. It wont be unfair. Pollio used to get attentive audiences by giving expensive dinners. He was a very sound historian, and the last of the Romans. My history of Carthage is full of amusing anecdotes. I'm sure that they'll enjoy it.

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus Requests the pleasure of your company At the burning of The Greater New York Metropolitan Area Forty-eight hours after receipt of this Invitation UNLESS The former god Apollo, now known as Lester Papadopoulos, Surrenders himself before that time to imperial justice At the Tower of Nero IN WHICH CASE We will just have cake GIFTS: Only expensive ones, please R.S.V.P. Don’t bother. If you don’t show up, we’ll know. I

Letter from Philippus of Athens to Lucius Annaeus Seneca: Yet the Empire of Rome that [Octavius] created has endured the harshness of a Tiberius, the monstrous cruelty of a Caligula, and the ineptness of a Claudius. And now our new Emperor is one whom you tutored as a boy, and to whom you remain close in his new authority; let us be thankful for the fact that he will rule in the light of your wisdom and virtue, and let us pray to the gods that, under Nero, Rome will at last fulfill the dream of Octavius Caesar.

When Nero, with a casual quip, declared ‘mushrooms to be the food of the gods, since it was by means of a mushroom that Claudius has become a god’,66 it

Others lived there with him but none of them would have done. His grand-uncle Augustus, founder of the Empire, was too much concerned with promulgating his own glory and establishing the central authority of the State to give us more than propaganda; his cruel and gloomy uncle Tiberius was too secretive to make any kind of autobiographer; it could hardly have been his demented predecessor Caligula, who believed himself to be a god, or the posturing and perverted Nero who followed. No, Claudius is the only one in all that company who we can believe in as a chronicler, the only one who would have been capable of the detachment and introspection needed.

While Agrippa never ruled in his own right his genes were intermingled in the blood of the Domus Augusta and it was his descendants who were destined for prominence. His daughter Vipsania Agrippina married Augustus’ step-son Tiberius, and through her Agrippa was grandfather to Drusus the Younger. As son-in-law to Augustus, his other daughter, Agrippina the Elder, married Germanicus, the son of Drusus the Elder (Nero Claudius Drusus), and through her Agrippa was the grandfather both of the future emperor Caligula and Agrippina the Younger, the mother of Emperor Nero – Agrippa’s great-grandson. Iulia also bore Agrippa three sons who were adopted by Augustus himself as his heirs, all of whom met tragic ends while still young men. Had they lived, and one of these succeeded him as emperor, the story of the Roman Empire may have taken a very different course.

I am sure that the Roman emperors didn’t have prayer to God in their schools. But then, the early Christians didn’t seem to care what Caligula or Claudius or Nero did. How could any emperor stop God? How, in fact, could the demons of hell make headway when God’s people prayed and called upon his name? Impossible! In the New Testament we don’t see Peter or John wringing their hands and saying, “Oh, what are we going to do? Caligula’s bisexual … he wants to appoint his horse to the Roman Senate … what a terrible model of leadership! How are we going to respond to this outrage?” Let’s not play games with ourselves. Let’s not divert attention away from the weak prayer life of our own churches. In Acts 4, when the apostles were unjustly arrested, imprisoned, and threatened, they didn’t call for a protest; they didn’t reach for some political leverage. Instead, they headed to a prayer meeting. Soon the place was vibrating with the power of the Holy Spirit (vv. 23–31).

Shortly after he had dispatched his “letter of tears,” Paul’s fortunes plummeted to a new low. Claudius’s last years had been clouded by court intrigues, and in October 54, he was poisoned by his wife and succeeded by Nero, his adopted seventeen-year-old son. The accession of the new emperor was hailed with relief and joy and an empire-wide resurgence of the imperial cult. But Rome was in trouble: The Parthians threatened the eastern frontier and there were uprisings in Judea. Scapegoats were needed, and Marcus Junius Silanus, governor of Asia, was murdered by Nero’s agents on suspicion of treason and, in a roundup of local malcontents, Paul was imprisoned in Ephesus. Luke, always the champion of Rome and reluctant to admit that Paul was ever regarded as an enemy of the empire, tells us nothing of this. Instead, he claims that Paul’s mission in Ephesus came to an end after a riot in the Temple of Artemis, when the silversmiths who crafted figurines of the goddess accused him of putting them out of business by undermining the cult.24

Unfortunately, Stoicism proved impossible to teach to anyone who didn’t already find its ideas and practices emotionally appealing. Anyone else trained along Stoic lines simply ended up learning how to pursue irrational ends with a Stoic’s focused will and utter disregard for popular opinion. The Roman emperor Claudius, for example, arranged to give his stepson the best available Stoic training at the hands of Seneca the Younger, one of the great Roman Stoic philosophers. The young man’s name was Nero; you may have heard of him, but probably not as a model of Stoic virtue. The emperor Marcus Aurelius, himself a Stoic philosopher of no mean skill, tried the same thing with his son Commodus, and the results were nearly as bad.

There had always been a tradition for emperors to display themselves at public ceremonies, particularly the Roman games. In the stands of the arena the emperor was, at least theoretically, accessible to the people. It was important that he be seen, and contemporary writers were quick to criticise emperors who misplayed their part: Augustus who signed letters, Claudius who had a penchant for topless women gladiators. There were occasions on which the emperor was heckled, and wise emperors accepted this with restraint, though some, like Domitian, responded by throwing members of the audience into combat in the arena, and it was recorded that people pretended to die just so they could escape Nero’s interminable recitations.

They still are snoops,” Tacitus put in. “The worst sort. They’ve even infected me, I’m afraid.” “Maybe you should try writing history,” Torquatus said. “Lots of unsolved mysteries in the past. For instance, did Claudius really just get some bad mushrooms by accident? Did Nero poison Britannicus or kill his mother?” He lowered his voice. “Did Domitian kill Titus?” “And there are lots of people who don’t want those mysteries solved.” Tacitus raised his wine cup. I was relieved that he changed the subject. “I’ll stick to writing speeches, thank you. They’re much safer.

A Roman city was founded by Etruscan rite (Etrusco ritu). At a designated day (by augury), a cow and a bull were harnessed to a plow. A furrow was cut within which the city would lay. Generally, we can say that this originally cut furrow is the pomerium. Boundary markers, cippi, delineated the pomerium. The historian Tacitus (Ann. 12.23) recorded that the emperor Claudius extended the pomerium. Cippi support this claim, while such archaeological proof does not exist for the extensions by Augustus, Nero, and Trajan, which Aulus Gellius mentioned.

Marcus located the other volumes and piled them on the table, then began to skim through the text. From the sternly moralistic Augustus, power had passed to the dour Tiberius, who had ended in utter debauchery and left the world at the mercy of the monstrous Caligula, whose bloody death had led to the reign of the hapless Claudius, cuckolded by one wife, Messalina, and probably murdered by another, Agrippina, who had put her son Nero on the throne and been rewarded with death. After Nero had come four emperors in quick succession: Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and then Vespasian, the bland but competent general who had left the empire to his sons, first the popular Titus, then the suspicious and cruel Domitian. There Suetonius’s account ended, but Marcus needed no historian to tell him about the reigns of Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian.