Claudius was an anomaly within the Julio-Claudian dynasty: the first emperor born outside Italy, in Lugdunum (modern-day Lyon), he was the son of Drusus the Elder and Antonia Minor, brother of Germanicus, and nephew of Tiberius. He was born with physical impairments that excluded him from public life and earned him the contempt of his own family. According to Suetonius, his mother Antonia used to say, when referring to someone foolish, that the person was “more stupid than her son Claudius.”

We do not know for certain what illness afflicted him (possibly cerebral palsy or poliomyelitis), but his intellectual abilities remained intact. He received an excellent education and displayed a deep passion for history, it is believed that Livy was among his teachers, and he wrote a history of the Etruscans, now lost. Augustus appreciated his oratory but kept him in a sheltered environment, considering him the weak link of the family. Ironically, this protected status spared him from the purges carried out by his uncle Tiberius and later by his nephew Caligula, who, according to Suetonius, treated him as a kind of sideshow curiosity. After Caligula’s assassination by the Praetorian Guard, Claudius was proclaimed emperor by those same guards, perhaps because they thought he would be easy to manipulate. In reality, he immediately ordered the elimination of the conspirators and consolidated his authority, entrusting administration to his freedmen, initiating major public works (including the Claudian Aqueduct), and launching new military campaigns in Thrace, Mauretania, and Britannia.

Particularly significant was his policy toward Gaul: by then an important productive and military hub, its proximity to the volatile Germanic frontier made securing its loyalty a strategic necessity. In 48 CE, Claudius proposed to the Senate that the ius honorum, the right to hold public office, be granted to Roman citizens of Gallic origin, thus opening the Senate’s doors to provincial elites. In antiquity, reforms of this nature always originated from the top, with the hope that they would eventually influence the lower classes. The proposal initially met resistance from conservative senators, but Claudius persuaded them with a famous speech, partially preserved on the Tabula Claudiana, reminding them that Rome had always thrived by integrating foreign peoples, starting by co-opting their ruling classes. He cited the examples of the Latins, Etruscans, and Sabines, as well as his own gens Claudia, which descended from the latter.

The measure was eventually approved.