The godliness that was attributed to his great-grandfather Augustus may have led him to believe not that he was a god but that he should be worshiped as a god. He lacked self-restraint. He indulged his appetites for food and grew fat and irritable. He indulged his sexual appetites. He wanted to be adored, but he made enemies and indulged an appetite for revenge and control.
He used his power to have those he saw as enemies executed. A conspiracy against him arose among those who felt their lives endangered, including officers of the Praetorian Guard. In the year 41, at the age of 29, after having been in power three years and ten months, members of his guard assassinated him. Claudius, a physical wreck, he was unadmired within the ruling Julio-Claudian family. He survived and became a diligent emperor.
But he married poorly. By now, senators had acquired the habit of timidity. There would be no restoration of the Senate's power. Instead, rule passed to Caligula's uncle, Claudius, who had bribed the Praetorian Guard into supporting him. Claudius stammered and had a disability that made him clumsy. He had been an embarrassment to the imperial family and had spent much of his life secluded, writing books on Roman, Etruscan and Carthaginian history. He is the last person known to have been able to read Etruscan.
Like historians with any competence, his histories offended. Not taken seriously as a possible heir, he had survived purges during the reigns of Tiberius and Caligula. In addition to an unusually high intelligence, Claudius was genuinely affable. And he cared about the empire. He proved to be an able and efficient administrator. He was also an ambitious builder, constructing many new roads, aqueducts, and canals across the Empire.
Wanting public support, Claudius tried reviving the image of an expanding empire. A Celtic tribal king fled from southern Britain to Rome and appealed for help against invasion by another tribe in Britain, and this gave Claudius his opportunity in his third year of rule. Britain was a strange place for Romans, and Claudius' 40, troops at first refused to disembark from their invasion boats.
But they overcame their first hesitation and that same year with their conquests they created Roman Britain, a new province. An edict by Claudius held that a master who murdered his slave because the slave was no long of use to him could be tried for murder, and Claudius extended freedom to a slave who had been abandoned by his or her master.
He was annoyed by Jews and tried to expel them from Rome, but like others who thought of themselves as polytheists he was generally tolerant of the worship of gods that he didn't worship, but not tolerant of Druidism.
Druids were known to perform human sacrifices, which the Romans viewed with abhorrence. It was around their Druid religion that Gauls rallied in opposition to Roman rule.
With religious diffusion still common, Claudius was on guard against its spread and he had a Roman executed after he noticed a Druidic talisman on his breast. Claudius married four times. After years of wandering, he landed in Italy.
By way of war and marriage, the Trojan wanderers combined with the Latins and founded Alba Longa. In the classic model of myth, the king of Alba Longa feared that the twins would be a threat to his rule, so he ordered them killed. The interference of the river god of the Tiber saved them from an early demise. They grew up suckled by a female wolf near the site of Rome then adopted by a local shepherd. After helping to restore their deposed grandfather to the throne of Alba Longa, they set out to establish their own city, and so founded Rome.
The historian Tacitus , though notoriously Republican and anti-emperor, was not altogether wrong in the above quote. The first five emperors of Rome operated by an extraordinarily frail balance, unable to claim the office of a ruler for fear of assassination, yet still making decisions in that capacity and having to hold onto power or risk another devastating civil war.
The resulting tension meant that they were frequently quick to punish and even execute those that saw to be a threat to their power, leaving a lot of hatred behind them. For all that, the Julio-Claudians did produce some good rulers. Augustus was an immensely capable and cunning emperor. The creation of his position as princeps was done masterfully using his charisma and skill, as well as military victory and intimidation. He also had an exemplary support team whom he trusted, headed up by his closest friend and right-hand man, Agrippa.
Succeeding Augustus, Tiberius continued many of the policies begun by his step-father and enjoyed successful rule, though he seemed to despise it. He eventually withdrew from active rule to enjoy his own pleasures at his spacious villa on Capri, a contributing factor in his poor reputation.
It seems that it may have only been a physical deformity of some kind, but it was enough that he was initially rejected as a candidate for princeps. He proved a capable one, though later paranoia blackened his reputation as well. Perhaps two of the most infamous names of Roman history also emerged from the Julio-Claudian dynasty, those of Caligula and Nero.
For the first few months of his rule, Caligula appeared to be everything his subjects could wish, kind, generous, respectful, and just.
After an illness that almost claimed his life, Caligula showed a different side of himself. He devoted himself to his pleasurable lifestyle and the theatre and games, squandering the imperial treasury on extravagant living. He was so enamored of a particular racehorse named Incitatus that he would invite the horse to lavish imperial dinners, and even planned to make the horse consul.
Even worse than eccentricity, he became vindictive and cruel, enjoying executions and the pain of the family of the condemned, and eventually devolving into sickening tortures. He killed the conspirators and then led the army into battle over the Rhine.
Though the campaigns were marginally successful, those 'captured' Germans present at his triumph were in actuality Romans in disguise. Caligula then spent the winter in Gaul, readying his forces to cross over to Britain for a conquest. When they arrived to the channel in the summer, however, the legions were ordered simply to collect seashells.
This insanity was topped off by his most self-destructive craziness. Judaea had been a client kingdom since Pompei. Herod had been the last important king there. A Hellenized Jewish convert from Transjordan, Herod had been a friend of the Romans, and built great structures all over the kingdom. He had died in 4 BCE, dividing up the realm among his three sons, giving the core Judaean lands to his son Archilaus.
Archilaus' rule was so poor and impious that the Jews petitioned Augustus to annex the area. Back in Caesar's time, the Jews of Alexandria had supported him, so the dictator had accorded them certain privileges: they had religious freedom and could keep the Sabbath; they were not liable for military service; the taxes that went to the Temple in Jerusalem would not be diverted to the state fisc; and in Judaea itself, Roman coins would not contain the Emperor's likeness, out of respect to the Jewish ban on graven images.
In the same vein, Jews were not required to participate in the imperial cult deification. Here, Caligula erred. Alexandrian Greeks had resented the Jews' exemptions, and demanded that Caligula's statue be emplaced in the Jews' Temple in Jerusalem. Riots broke out in support of this in Alexandria, and Caligula, who was engaged in propagating his own divinity in any event, took over the notion, and commanded that his likeness—tantamount to an idol—be put in the Temple.
Herod Agrippa, one of Herod's descendants, told him he was crazy, but Caligula commanded the Syrian governor to comply. The latter stalled, upon which Caligula threatened to kill him. In the event, the stature never arrived, because in 41 Caligula was assassinated by an officer of the Praetorian Guard whom the emperor had offended. With no obvious successor, a political vacuum emerged. In chaotic circumstances, the Senate met to decide the fate of the Empire. There was talk of return to a dual consul republic, and some thought to choose the Princeps.
In the meantime, Praetorian Guard members had discovered Claudius, Germanicus' younger brother, cowering behind a curtain in the palace. Taking him to the Praetorian camp, the Guard recognized him as emperor, with financial inducement.
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