composed a brief answer to a work of the Port- cerning the country of his birth; yet it seems royalists, on the perpetuity of the doctrine of sufficiently decided by the absolute assertion of the Roman church concerning the eucharist. Suidas, asserting him to have been a native of This was the origin of a famous controversy, Alexandria, confirmed by Sidonius Apollinaris, in which several pieces were written on both and by some lines of Claudian's own, in which sides, and Claude displayed his talents for dis- he speaks of Egypt as his country, and calls the putation to great advantage. Unable to obtain Nile" his own." He appears, however, to have any favour from the court, he went from Paris lived chiefly in Italy and Rome. He early atto Montauban, where he was chosen minister; tached himself to the renowned general Stilicho, and after four years' residence at that place, be- whom he seems to have accompanied during the ing again silenced by an order from court, he five years preceding the consulship of that comaccepted, in 1666, an invitation from the church mander, and whose friendships and enmities he at Charenton. In this situation he performed adopted with all the zeal of a partisan. By the the most essential services to his party, by se- favour of Serena, the spouse of Stilicho, he obtained a rich and noble wife in Africa. He ar veral controversial works, and by his able conduct at synods and consistories, in which he rived at the titular dignity of tribune and nodisplayed admirable talents in the management tary; and the Roman senate erected a statue to of business. In 1678 he held a private dispu- his honour in the forum of Trajan. That he was not a christian, as some have maintained, tation with the celebrated Bossuet, in which each party, as usual, claimed the victory. Bos- is sufficiently apparent from the whole tenor of suet published an account of this conference, his writings. Some short pieces on christian At topics, inserted among his works, were either which was answered by that of Claude. the revocation of the edict of Nantes, in 1685, written by another of the same name, or were he received an order to depart the kingdom in composed by him merely as exercises. His twenty-four hours, though fifteen days was the disposition to satire and invective seems, after time allowed to the other ministers so eager the fall of his great patron, to have involved him in trouble; but with the latter part of his life, were the catholic clergy to get rid of a man whose influence they had sensibly felt! He and his death, we are totally unacquainted. retired to Holland, where he was honourably received by the prince of Orange, who granted him a considerable pension. This he lived but a short time to enjoy, being carried off by a sudden illness, in January, 1687, to the great concern of the whole protestant party. Claude was allowed, even by his antagonists, to possess great powers as a controversialist. His style, if not brilliant, was strong, vigorous, close, and correct; and no one knew better how to employ all the subtleties of logic in pushing an adversary. He had sound learning and solid judgment, keen wit, and a ready elocution. His figure was ordinary, and his voice bad; yet he was listened to with great attention, and made a strong impression on his audience. His morals were irreproachable, and his integrity untainted. He left a son, who was minister at the Hague, and published his father's posthumous works, in 5 vols. 12mo. Amst. 1688. Bayle. Moreri.-A. CLAUDIAN. CLAUDIUS CLAUDIANUS, a Latin poet of great celebrity, flourished in the fourth century, under the reigns of Theodosius, and his sons Arcadius and Honorius. Little is known with certainty concerning his life and fortunes, further than can be deduced from the incidental notices contained in his own writings. Much doubt has been raised con As a poet, Claudian is a remarkable phenomenon in the history of literature. After the rapid decline of taste and purity in writing from the Augustan period, and the intervention of centuries without any name in Roman poetry superior to that of Ausonius, a foreigner, educated in Greek literature, started up, who was able to take his place among the most admired of the Latin classics, and to contend for the palm with the masters of the language. It seems to be agreed upon by critics, that Claudian wanted a topic and an age, rather than a genius, to rise to the first rank among poets. The greater part of his subjects have precluded any considerable efforts of the sublime or the pathetic; for what can be more unfavourable to mental elevation than the necessity of becoming a slavish panegyrist, or a bitter satirist? Yet some of his narrative-pieces have been the means of preserving various facts illustrative of the manners and events of the times, which are not to be learned from the barren histories of that period; and some of the objects of his description, particularly the hosts of martial barbarians which then began to burst like an inundation into the Roman empire, are fertile in curious and striking imagery. Gibbon, who has derived much historical matter from the works of Claudian, and was well capable of appre ciating him both as a narrator and a poet, after fects. He was the object of contempt and CLAUDIUS, fifth emperor of Rome, whose name at length was Tiberius Claudius Drusus Germanicus, the son of Nero Claudius Drusus by Antonia minor, brother of Germanicus, and nephew of the emperor Tiberius, was born at Lyons, in the year of Rome 742. From his childhood he was afflicted with diseases which injured both his mind and his body, and were the cause of a lasting stupidity and weakness of understanding, which rendered him incapable of filling with propriety any of the offices of life, though it did not absolutely disqualify him from literary attainments. He acquired a knowledge of the Greek language, as well as of his own, and was able to write with purity and a degree of elegance; but he was radically deficient in judgment and comprehension, and was equally dull in his perceptions and blunt in his feelings. The treatment he met with, indeed, was such as to aggravate his natural de spectators, as he passed through the marketplace, to pity him, under the persuasion that he was going to be put to death. The contest which ensued between the senate, which desired to restore a free government, and the prætorian bands, which determined upon supporting a master of their own choosing, soon ended in favour of the power of the sword; and Claudius, in his fiftieth year, A.D. 41, was unanimously elevated to the imperial dignity. He began his reign with mild and moderate measures. He published a general amnesty with respect to the opposition he had met with; and, more perhaps through insensibility than magnanimity, he passed over with neglect all the scorns and insults with which his former weakness had been treated. He shewed an extraordinary reverence for the memory of Augustus, and paid honours to almost all his deceased relatives and progenitors. He also abolished the formidable laws of treason, and set at liberty those whom Caligula had imprisoned on that account. He displayed profound respect to the senate, and deference to the magistrates, and was extremely modest in the assumption of personal honours and distinctions. But these tokens of a good disposition were little to be relied upon in one so radically weak, and made to be governed by women and favourites. His wife was at that time the infamous Messalina, whose cruelty was little inferior to that unchastity which has made her name proverbial. Three potent freedmen, Pallas, Narcissus, and Callistus, rivals in insolence and rapacity, held him in the most disgraceful subjection. They inspired him with apprehensions of all of whose approach they were jealous, and disposed at their pleasure of all the great offices of state. Hence the public events of Claudius's reign belong so little to the emperor himself, that a very slight notice of them will suffice in a biographical sketch; nor is there much to record of his private life, except further instances of his stupid insensibility. The empire had the fortune in this reign of possessing commanders of great vigour and military skill, who enlarged its boundaries, and secured it against foreign attacks. Galba and Corbulo obtained advantages over the Germans. Mauritania and Thrace were reduced to the condition of Roman provinces. But it was principally by the conquest of the best part of the island of Britain, that the period of Claudius is rendered illustrious in the historical annals of Rome. From the time of Julius Cæsar, Britain had been viewed at a distance by the Roman emperors, as an acquisition flattering indeed to the vanity of con VOL. III. quest, but hazardous to attempt. Claudius was induced to send over an army under his generak Plautius, whose success was such, that the em-. peror himself, desirous of a pretext for triumphing, crossed the sea, and remained sixteen days in the island, occupied in receiving the submission of the vanquished tribes as far as the Thames. His triumph was a farce; but the design of pursuing the conquest of Britain was seriously executed. The first acquisitions were formed into a Roman province. Ostorius, the successor of Plautius, greatly extended the limits of the Roman dominion; and, by the defeat and capture of Caractacus, made an important progress in subduing the southern portion of the island. Little more was effected by his successor Didius; and it was not till the reign of Domitian that the conquest could be reckoned complete and secure. Claudius likewise obtained some credit by the public works undertaken in his reign. One of the most splendid and useful of these, was an artificial port formed at Ostia, the mouth of the Tiber. The draining of the waters of the Fucine lake, on which thirty thousand men were employed eleven years, appears to have been a work not adequate to its expence. The completion of the aqueduct of Caius, for bringing water to Rome, was an object worthy of imperial magnificence. Claudius had also a great passion for reforming and regulating the courts of law, and other civil matters. He frequently sat in person on the bench, and delighted to hear and decide causes, in which he sometimes displayed a gleam of good sense, but oftener, by his stupidity and inconsistency, exposed himself to ridicule. The numerous ordinances which he issued, were a mixture of sense and folly, generally well intended, but little considered. Among other novelties, he introduced by the imperial authority three new letters into the Roman alphabet, the want of which he proved by a learned dissertation. They were employed in the public monuments of his reign, but afterwards fell into total disuse. were many real or pretended conspiracies against him, which cost much of the best blood of Rome; for it was easy to work upon his fears so as to extinguish all the compunction he might feel for acts of severity; indeed, his natural insensibility was such, that he was nearly indifferent to the fate even of those who were nearest him. It was computed that thirty senators, and three hundred and twenty-five knights, were put to death by his orders, though probably he scarcely knew the names of many of the victims, who were really those of his wives and C freedmen. He was fond of public spectacles, and especially of gladiatorian combats, which, indeed, was the taste of the whole Roman people, and nourished their appetite for cruelty. At the completion of the work for letting out the waters of the Fucine lake, before they were discharged, Claudius gave the spectacle of a naumachia, such as probably was never before nor since exhibited. Two fleets were manned with nineteen thousand combatants, all condemned criminals, who shewing an unwillingness to engage, were compelled to it by the emperor's guards, and not suffered to desist till after much bloodshed. The most extraordinary domestic event in the reign of Claudius, and one, indeed, which would be incredible, were it not for the concurrent testimony of historians, was the public marriage of Messalina, to her lover Silius, a young nobleman of singular beauty, and the designated consul. That abandoned woman, not content with the most undisguised display of her fondness for her paramour, had resolved to show her contempt for all decency, and her utter disregard for her husband, by publicly marrying Silius while the emperor was living. It appears, indeed, that this was a desperate measure proposed by Silius, who was sensible that the notoriety of his amour with the empress must, at length, become his ruin, if not prevented by the death of Claudius, which was doubtless a part of the design. They were actually united in sight of the whole city, with all the accustomed nuptial ceremonies; and it is affirmed by Suetonius, that Claudius himself signed the contract, deluded by Messalina with some superstitious pretence. He was at Ostia when the event took place, and he remained ignorant of it after it was the common discourse of all Rome. At length the freedman Narcissus undertook to inform him of his dishonour and danger. Struck with consternation, he was at a loss how to act, but at length he issued orders to arrest the culprits. Messalina, who had thoughtlessly abandoned herself to all the dissolute pleasures of her guilty connection, was apprised of the approaching storm, and still hoped, by her ascendancy over her weak husband, to divert it. But Narcissus took care that she should not obtain the advantage of an interview; and finding the emperor waver, he himself gave orders to put her to death. When the deed was perpetrated, Claudius was made acquainted with it as he sat at table. He did not interrupt his repast by any enquiry; but, sunk in stupid insensibility, he exhibited not the least mark of joy, sorrow, or any human affection, on that or the succeeding days. After the death of Messalina, Claudius fell into the power of his niece Agrippina, who by her arts induced him to take her for a wife, though not till he had overcome his scruples with respect to an alliance deemed incestuous among the Romans. Her domination was not less haughty and cruel than that of her predecessor had been; and she was able to effect the great point of causing her son Nero to be adopted by the emperor, to the prejudice of his own son, the young Britannicus, from whose person she removed all who were attached to him. Yet Claudius really loved his son, as much as he was capable of loving any thing; but he saw nothing with his own eyes, and was no more than a mere machine in the hands of those who governed him. (See the article of AGRIPPINA THE YOUNGER.) He passed some years more in this insignificant condition: till at length, being made sensible of some of the enormities of his wife, he unguardedly dropt some expressions which implied an intention of punishing them. Agrippina, informed of these by her spies, resolved to be beforehand with him; and accordingly took advantage of his gluttonous voracity, to administer poison to him in a dish of mushrooms. struggled a short time against its effects, and then expired, A.D. 54, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and fourteenth of his reign. It is unnecessary to add any more circumstances to characterise an animal of so mean a species, that nothing but his possession of imperial power could have rendered him an object of rational curiosity. Tacit. Annal. Sueton. Vit. Claud. Dio Cass.-A. He CLAUDIUS, M. AURELIUS, Roman emperor, was one of those martial characters of barbarian birth who upheld the decline of Rome. Illyricum, Dardania, and Dalmatia, is each mentioned as his native country. His origin was obscure, though after his elevation the genealogists, as usual, exercised their invention in giving him an ancient pedigree. He was bred to arms, and first obtained distinction under the emperor Decius. Valerian gave him the command of a legion, and afterwards raised him to the important post of general in chief of the troops which guarded the Illyrian frontier. In this situation, his victories over the Goths obtained for him the honour of a statue from the Roman senate. He was an object of apprehension to Gallienus, who being informed that Claudius had spoken of him with disapprobation, employed a friend to mediate between them, and endeavoured to secure his allegiance by rich presents. When Gallienus was mor tally wounded in a tumult excited by conspirators, he requested, before he expired, that the imperial ornaments should be delivered to Claudius, then at the head of a body of troops near Pavia. This, at least, was the report; and Claudius, then in his fifty-fourth year, A.D. 268, was raised to the throne. The consent of the army was secured by a donative, and the senate chearfully confirmed the election. The usurper Aureolus, then besieged in Milan, attempted to negociate with Claudius, but was not listened to; and his surrender and death soon followed. Claudius then led all his troops against the Germans, who had made an irruption into Italy, and whom he totally defeated in a battle near the lake Benacus. After this success he visited Rome, where he was received with the greatest demonstrations of attachment; and he spent the remainder of the year in re. forming the abuses and healing the disorders of the state, in which he displayed equal justice and prudence. He also bent his cares in a peculiar manner to the restoration of order and discipline in the army, whose services were demanded in the beginning of the next year, by a most formidable invasion of the Goths, and other northern people; who, issuing in a numerous fleet from the Euxine sea, had ravaged the coasts of Europe and Asia, and were now engaged in the siege of Thessalonica. Claudius flew to the scene of danger, and was met by the barbarian host in the province of Upper Moesia. A letter, still extant, which he wrote to the senate, forcibly displays his sense of the difficulties he had to encounter, and his resolution to do all in his power in overcoming them. A great battle ensued in the neighbourhood of Naissus, in which the emperor's activity and military skill regained the field which had been nearly lost, and a great slaughter was made of the barbarians. The large bodies who escaped still, however, maintained the war in the Macedonian and Thracian provinces; till, after the ruin of the Gothic fleet, and a long series of operations, conducted by Claudius with consummate judgment, the invaders were almost entirely destroyed, or compelled to surrender. But a pestilential disease, which was one of the scourges endured and inflicted by the barbarians, spread to the emperor himself, and carried him off at Sirmium in Pannonia, in the spring of 270, after a glorious reign of two years and one month. His last cares were occupied in promoting the welfare of the empire, by the recommendation of Aurelian, as his successor. Crispus, the elder brother of Claudius, CLA was the ancestor of Constantine. Univers. CLAUDIUS, APPIUS, founder of the illus- CLAUDIUS, APPIUS, son of the preceding, inherited both the unyielding temper and the party principles of his father. On occasion of the proposing of a law by the tribune Volero, by which the influence of the patricians in the future elections of tribunes would be entirely subverted, the senate procured the election of Appius Claudius to the consulate, B.C. 471, as the most effectual measure to resist the attack, To moderate his warmth, a colleague was given him of a more gentle and complying disposition, in consequence of which they acted without unanimity; and in spite of all the efforts of Claudius, the law of Volero was carried. Rome was soon after engaged in a war against the qui and Volsci, when a memorable example was given of the bad effects of popular odium against a commander. Claudius led out his unwilling troops against the Volsci; and being no longer checked in the field by tribunitian au thority, he made the soldiers feel the full weight |