Claudius: Found Behind a Curtain, Poisoned With Mushrooms?

Claudius: Found Behind a Curtain, Poisoned With Mushrooms? (Found behind a curtain, poisoned with mushrooms by his wife? What in this story is certain and what was only told, and how a sixteen-year-old got the throne.) — lesson 8 of the course: 7 parts, about 35 min of reading.

Caligula’s lame, stammering uncle hides behind a curtain, and the soldier who spots his feet hails him as emperor. Claudius rules for thirteen years, builds a harbor at Ostia and conquers Britain, but his wives and freedmen steer the state. The episode ends with a dinner of mushrooms: the ancients write of poisoning, in one version by his wife, and scholars say: possible, unproven.

Films

• Palatine Hill, January 24, AD 41: feet behind a curtain — On the Palatine on January 24, AD 41, a soldier drags the hidden Claudius out from behind a curtain and hails him as emperor.
• The emperor’s expedition: from Ostia to Camulodunum, AD 43 — Claudius’s expedition to Britain in AD 43: from Ostia through Massilia and Gaul to Gesoriacum, the Channel crossing, the capture of Camulodunum and the return to Rome.
• The family tree that decided the throne — Claudius’s four wives, his children and Nero’s adoption in AD 50.

Articles

• The Emperor Behind the Curtain — Claudius: Found Behind a Curtain, Poisoned With Mushrooms? — They found the emperor of Rome behind a curtain. First they saw his feet.
• The Family Fool — Claudius: Found Behind a Curtain, Poisoned With Mushrooms? — Claudius was born on August 1, 10 BC, in Lugdunum, today’s Lyon, on the day an altar to Augustus was dedicated there (Suetonius, Claudius 2). His father, Drusus, died when the boy was an infant.
• The Emperor and His Freedmen — Claudius: Found Behind a Curtain, Poisoned With Mushrooms? — The surprise: Claudius rules well. He starts by cleaning up after Caligula.
• Messalina — Claudius: Found Behind a Curtain, Poisoned With Mushrooms? — Valeria Messalina marries Claudius around AD 38–⁠39. She is very young then (her birth year is uncertain, c.
• The Niece — Claudius: Found Behind a Curtain, Poisoned With Mushrooms? — After Messalina’s death the court is shaken, writes Tacitus. The freedmen quarrel over who will choose the emperor a new wife.
• The Lake of the Condemned — Claudius: Found Behind a Curtain, Poisoned With Mushrooms? — Agrippina is not content with the title of Augusta. Tacitus records that she sends a colony of veterans to the chief town of the Ubii, where she was born, and names it after herself (12.
• The Last Supper — Claudius: Found Behind a Curtain, Poisoned With Mushrooms? — In AD 53 Nero marries Octavia, the emperor’s daughter. Tacitus writes that he is sixteen (Annals 12.