289 



CLAUDIUS, MARCUS AURELIUS. 



CLAVIGERO, FRANCESCO SA VERIO. 



270 



CLAUDIUS, MARCUS AURELIUS, surnamed GOTHICUS, was 

 bom in Illyricum A.D. 214, served in the army as tribune under Decius, 

 was afterwards governor of bis native province under Valerinnus, and 

 after the death of Gallienua in 268, near Milan, was proclaimed 

 emperor by the army. The choice was immediately approved by the 

 Senate. Claudius began his reign by defeating the usurper Aureolus, 

 who had revolted against Gallienus, and had taken possession of 

 Milan. Aureolus was killed in the battle. Claudius afterwards 

 marched against the Germans, who had entered Italy, and defeated 

 them on the banks of the Benaoua (Lake of Garda). On arriving at 

 Rome, he was received with great honours, and applied himself to 

 reform many of the abuses which existed in the administration of the 

 empire. In the following year he marched against the Goths, or 

 Scythians, who had invaded the province of Mccsia, defeated them 

 with great slaughter, and made a vast number of prisoners, whom he 

 distributed over various provinces as labourers. In cousequence of 

 this victory, he assumed the name of Gothicus. In the year after 

 (A.H. 270) he died at Sirmium, in Fannouia, of a contagious disease 

 which had spread in his army, after a short reign of little more than 

 two years, during which he exhibited virtues and abilities that entitle 

 him to be numbered among the best emperors of Rome. The Senate 

 named his brother Quintilius his successor, but the army proclaimed 

 Aurelianus, upon which Quintilius was killed, or killed himself 

 according to others. (Trebellius Pollio in Ilistoria Augusta.) 



Coin of Claudius Cothicus. 

 British Museum. Actual size. Bronze. Weight 125 grains. 



CLA'UDIUS NERO, the son of Drusus Nero, the brother of 

 Tiberius, and of Antonia Minor, the daughter of M. Antonius the 

 Triumvir, by Octavin, the sister of Augustus, was born at Lyou 

 u.c. 10. [AUGUSTUS.] In his youth he was sickly, weak, and timid, 

 which made his mother Bay that he was but the half-finished sketch of 

 a man. Augustus, in compassion, used to call him miidlns, little 

 wretch. He was left to the company of the women and the freedmen 

 of the palace, and little notice was taken of him under Augustus and 

 Tiberius. He lived in privacy, and appears to have applied himself 

 with perseverance to study. He became a proficient in Greek and 

 Latin, and wrote, with the assistance of Sulpicius Flavius, a hiatory of 

 Rome, in 43 books, which is lost. He suggested the addition of three 

 new letters to the Roman alphabet, and he enforced the use of them 

 during his reign, after which they fell into disuse, but still appeared 

 in the time of Tacitus in the old inscriptions (' Annal.,' xi. 14). He 

 also applied himself with much perseverance to the study and practice 

 of oratory, and Tacitus has transmitted to us a favourable specimen 

 in a speech which he delivered before the senate when emperor, in 

 favour of the Gauls, who were asking to be admitted to the rights of 

 Roman citizens. ('Annal.' xi. 24.) 



When Caligula, who was the nephew of Claudius, became emperor, 

 he took his uncle as bis colleague in the consulship, A.D. 37. After 

 the expiration of his consulship Claudius again withdrew into privacy, 

 from which he was dragged by some mutinous soldiers, who were 

 overrunning the imperial palace after the death of Caligula, and who 

 discovered Claudius concealed behind a tapestry, and trembling from 

 fear. They raised him on their shoulders, and carried him to the camp, 

 where he was proclaimed emperor by the troops in A.D. 41, against 

 the wishes of the senate and of many of the citiaens, who were for 

 restoring the republic. This was the first example of that baneful 

 practice, which the soldiers so often repeated, of disposing of the 

 imperial crown. Claudius, who was then fifty years of age, began his 

 reign by acts of justice and of mercy; he recalled exiles, restored to 

 the rightful owners much property which had been confiscated under 

 Tiberius and Caligula, rejected the honours and titles which the 

 flattery of courtiers would have bestowed upon him, embellished 

 Rome, formed an aqueduct for a fresh supply of water, which still 

 bears his name, constructed a harbour at the mouth of the Tiber, and 

 began the emissary of the Lake Fucinus. He also went over to 

 Britain, which country he first permanently occupied, at least in part, 

 by his generals 1'lautius and Vespasianus, and afterwards by Ostorius. 

 Caractacus, who was brought prisoner before him at Rome, expe- 

 rienced the imperial clemency. Claudius afterwards fell into a state 

 of apathy and imbecility, being entirely governed by his profligate 

 wife Messalina and the freedmen of the palace who were leagued with 

 her. They took advantage of his excessive timidity and credulity to 

 make him sign the death-warrants of numerous senators and knights, 

 whom they represented as conspirators, and whose property was con- 

 fiscated for their benefit. Messalina openly abandoned herself to the 

 most shameless licentiousness, and no one dared to check her, or 

 remonstrate with the emperor on her conduct, for fear of incurring 



her deadly revenge. She carried her effrontery at last so far as publicly 

 to marry Caius Silius, one of the handsomest men of Rome, while 

 Claudius was absent at Ostia. The emperor, who was roused from 

 his torpor by the report of this scandal, gave orders that Messalina 

 should be put to death. Soon afterwards he married (50) his own 

 niece, Agrippiua the younger, the widow of Domitius Aenobarbus, and 

 mother of L. Domitius. Agrippina easily prevailed on the weak 

 Claudius to adopt her son Domitius, who assumed his stepfather's 

 name of Nero, by which he was afterwards known as emperor, and to 

 give him in marriage his daughter Octavia. Agrippiua having thus 

 paved the way for the succession of her own son to the throne, to the 

 prejudice of Britannicus, the son of Claudius by Messaliua, completed 

 her object by poisoniug her husband at Sinueasa, where he had gone 

 for the benefit of his health. Claudius died in 54, in his sixty-fourth 

 year, after being in possession of the sovereign power for thirteen 

 years and nine months. His funeral was celebrated with great pomp, 

 and he was numbered among the gods, but his will was not read in 

 public in order to avoid exciting disturbances among tlie people on 

 account of the preference given to Nero over Britannicus. 

 (Tacitus, Ann. xii. 69; Suetonius, Claudius; Dion.) 



Coin of Claudius Nero. 

 British Museum. Actual size. Bronze. Weight 437 grains. 



CLAUSEL, BEUTRAND, COUNT, Marshal of Trance, was born 

 at Mirepoix, December 12, 1772. He entered the army very young, 

 and became aide-de-camp to General P<5rignon, with whom he served 

 in the army of the Pyrenees, in 1794-95. He was already a brigadier- 

 general when attached to the corps of Leclerc, whom he accompanied 

 to St. Domingo, and soon was raised to the command of a division. 

 On his return from that ill-fated expedition in 1804 he served in Italy 

 and Germany. His services were next transferred to Spain, where he 

 greatly distinguished himself. His name appears in most of the 

 narratives of the great battles ; and he was badly wounded at Sala- 

 manca. In 1813 he commanded one of the corps d'arme'es, which 

 were employed against Wellington, and fought the English almost 

 daily during the retreat into France. Having been induced to join 

 Napoleon during the Hundred Days, he was obliged after the restora- 

 tion to leave his country for several years, and retire to America. 

 Subsequently, having returned to Trance, he was appointed to succeed 

 Marshal Bourmont as commander-in-chief in Africa in 1830, was 

 created a marshal himself the following year, and governor of Algeria 

 in 1832. Foiled in his attempt upon Constantine in 1836, he returned 

 dispirited to Paris, and closed his arduous life at Toulouse on the 

 20th of April 1841, his military career in the field having extended 

 over thirty years. 



(Rabbe ; Feller, Biog. Univ. ; Diet, tie Conversation.) 

 CLAVI'GERO, FRANCESCO SAVERIO, was born at Vera Cruz, 

 in Mexico, about 1720. He entered the order of Jesuits, and was 

 sent as missionary among the Indians in various parts of Mexico, 

 where he says, in the preface to his work, he spent thirty-six years, 

 visiting the country in every direction, living at times entirely among 

 the Indians, whose language he learned, collecting their traditions, 

 and examining the historical paintings, manuscripts, and monuments 

 relative to the ancient history of the aboriginal tribes, with the view of 

 writing a correct account of Mexico ; since he had found, on reading 

 the Spanish authors who had preceded him, that their works were 

 disfigured by many errors and misrepresentations. After the Jesuits 

 were suppressed by Spain in 1767, Clavigero left Mexico for Italy, 

 where the pope granted to the expelled fathers an asylum in the States 

 of the Church. Clavigero, and others of his brethren from Spanish 

 America, had the town of Cesena assigned to them as their residence ; 

 a circumstance which gave Clavigoro a good opportunity of comparing 

 his own information with that collected by his brother missionaries in 

 various provinces of Spanish America. He now set about writing his 

 ' History of Mexico," which he published in Italian, ' Storia antica del 

 Messico cavata dai migliori Storici Spagnuoli, e dai Manoscritti e 

 dalli Pitture antiche degl' Indiani,' 4 vols. 4to, Cesena, 1730-1, with 

 maps and plates, which he dedicated to the learned Carli. In the first 

 volume, after a long and critical list of all the Spanish writers on 

 Mexico, the author gives an account of the countries constituting 

 that empire; of their natural history, of their early inhabitants, 

 their various migrations, and of the establishment of the dominion 

 of the Aztecs, and concludes with a sketch of the political state of 



