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.
Thirteen years later the same man will die after a dinner of mushrooms. Ancient authors write of poisoning, and in one version his wife served him the mushrooms. They disagree on the details, though. In this episode we separate what is certain from what was only told. First, see how this man became emperor at all.
January 24, AD 41. Caligula, the third emperor of Rome, lies dead in a palace passage on the Palatine. He was killed by officers of his own Guard, among them the tribune Cassius Chaerea (Suetonius, Caligula 58). The Germans of the emperor’s personal bodyguard rush to take revenge. They kill several of the conspirators and, along the way, a few senators who had nothing to do with any of it. Panic breaks out in the palace.
The dead man’s uncle is there. Tiberius Claudius Drusus, the younger brother of the famous Germanicus, is in his fiftieth year. He has a lame leg, a trembling head and a stammer. All his life his family has treated him as an embarrassing burden. When the assassins close the doors on the pretext that the emperor wants to be alone, Claudius is pushed out with the crowd and takes refuge in a chamber called the Hermaeum (Suetonius, Claudius 10).
A moment later word reaches him that his nephew is dead. What does a man nobody ever took seriously do when armed men are running through the palace? Suetonius describes it in great detail.
The soldier takes him to his comrades. They do not yet know what to do, and they are furious (Suetonius, Claudius 10). Claudius’s own bearers have already run away, so the soldiers sit him in a litter and carry him, taking turns, to their camp.
The crowd that passes the litter looks at him with pity. People think an innocent man is being led to his execution. No one suspects they are carrying an emperor.
There is one problem with the curtain. It appears only in Suetonius. Cassius Dio writes that the soldiers entered the palace to plunder it and found Claudius crouching in a dark corner. At first they took him for someone else, or decided he had something valuable on him. Only then did they recognize him (Dio 60.1). Josephus speaks of a narrow, dark place and names the man who found him Gratus (Antiquities of the Jews 19.1). On one point they all agree: nobody was looking for an emperor. He turned up by accident.
The rest of the night belongs to politics. The consuls and the Senate occupy the Forum and the Capitol, ready to defend freedom, that is, the republic (Suetonius, Claudius 10). Dio writes that the Senate floats various ideas: some want democracy, others monarchy, and neither side can agree on a candidate. By morning they have decided nothing (60.1). The soldiers, for their part, do not want an emperor chosen by someone else. They want to give one to the world themselves.
By morning the Senate is still arguing. Outside the building a crowd demands a single ruler and calls Claudius by name. Then Claudius lets the assembled soldiers swear an oath to him and promises each of them fifteen thousand sesterces. Suetonius records that he is the first of the Caesars to buy the loyalty of the army. Dio adds that Claudius refused and protested, but in the end gave way, though supposedly reluctantly (60.1).
How does the new emperor treat those who wanted to bypass him? Surprisingly gently. He announces that everything done and said over those two days is to be forgiven and forgotten. He keeps his word, with one exception: a few tribunes and centurions who had conspired against Caligula are put to death, because they had demanded his death as well (Suetonius, Claudius 11).
Dio records one more thing. Among those executed is Chaerea, the man to whom Claudius owes his throne. The emperor shows no gratitude. He decides that anyone who dared to kill an emperor might do it again (60.3).
So Rome has an emperor nobody had ever thought of as one. Who is the man whose own family kept him away from public office?