The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete eBook

    Et lassata viris, necdum satiata, recessit.—­Juvenal, Sat.  VI.

It has been already observed, that Claudius was entirely governed by his freedmen; a class of retainers which enjoyed a great share of favour and confidence with their patrons in those times.  They had before been the slaves of their masters, and had obtained their freedom as a reward for their faithful and attentive services.  Of the esteem in which they were often held, we meet with an instance in Tiro, the freedman of Cicero, to whom that illustrious Roman addresses several epistles, written in the most familiar and affectionate strain of friendship.  As it was common for them to be taught the more useful parts of education in the families of their masters, they were usually well qualified for the management of domestic concerns, and might even be competent to the superior departments of the state, especially in those times when negotiations and treaties with foreign princes seldom or never occurred; and in arbitrary governments, where public affairs were directed more by the will of the sovereign or his ministers, than by refined suggestions of policy.

From the character generally given of Claudius before his elevation to the throne, we should not readily imagine that he was endowed with any taste for literary composition; yet he seems to have exclusively enjoyed this distinction during his own reign, in which learning was at a low ebb.  Besides history, Suetonius informs us that he wrote a Defence of Cicero against the Charges of Asinius Gallus.  This appears to be the only tribute of esteem or approbation paid to the character of Cicero, from the time of Livy the historian, to the extinction of the race of the Caesars.  Asinius Gallus was the son of Asinius Pollio, the orator.  Marrying Vipsania after she had been divorced by Tiberius, he incurred the displeasure of that emperor, and died of famine, either voluntarily, or by order of the tyrant.  He wrote a comparison between his father and Cicero, in which, with more filial partiality than justice, he gave the preference to the former.

NERO CLAUDIUS CAESAR.

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I. Two celebrated families, the Calvini and Aenobarbi, sprung from the race of the Domitii.  The Aenobarbi derive both their extraction and their cognomen from one Lucius Domitius, of whom we have this tradition:  —­As he was returning out of the country to Rome, he was met by two young men of a most august appearance, who desired him to announce to the senate and people a victory, of which no certain intelligence had yet reached the city.  To prove that they were more than mortals, they stroked his cheeks, and thus changed his hair, which was black, to a bright colour, resembling that of brass; which mark of distinction descended to his posterity, for they had generally red beards.  This family had the honour of seven consulships [548], one triumph [549], and two censorships