Y12 Ancient History Roman/Julio-Claudian Points Test 13 Claudius Relations with Orders

Question 1

1. Describe how Claudius tried to develop a positive relationship with the Senate? (any relevant point for 3 marks).

Answer 1

• Claudius was aware that the Principate needed to be modified, since the definition of imperial and senatorial authority was very vague and the business of running the empire had become more complex.
• However, he was conservative and – like Augustus – he knew that any move towards a centralised autocracy would have to be achieved slowly.
• Also like Augustus, he showed great respect for the senate and attempted to increase its prestige. He encouraged the senators to debate and to vote seriously, and in his own speeches he argued with moderation and recognised the Senate’s point of view…
“If these proposals are approved by you, show your assent at once plainly and sincerely. If, however, you do not approve of them, then find some other remedies, but here in this temple now, or if you wish to take a longer time for consideration, take it so long as you recollect that wherever you meet you should produce an opinion of your own. For it is extremely unfitting, conscript fathers, to the high dignity of this order that at this meeting one man only…should make a speech…and the rest utter one word only, ‘agreed’, and then after leaving the house remark “there, we’ve given our opinion.” (Berlin Papyrus).
• Claudius revised the membership of the senate in order to recruit the best political talent. He strengthened it by adding new patrician families and by extending senatorial privileges to the Aedui (Gauls).
• This latter measure aroused the senate’s anger, but the argument put forward by Claudius in favour of it revealed his statesmanlike attitude.
“Senators, however ancient any institution seems, once upon a time it was new! First, plebeians joined patricians in office. Next, Latins were added. Then came men from other Italian peoples. The innovation now proposed will, in its turn, one day be old; what we seek to justify by precedents today will itself become a precedent.” (Annals).
• He also wished to expel notoriously bad senators, and he became censor in order to carry this out.
• However, rather than use the old severe method, he gave those concerned a chance to voluntarily renounce senatorial rank and thus avoid humiliation.
• It is argued that the senate, overall, had a poor relationship with Claudius, but although our sources suggest sufficient aspects to his governance that would have led to objections from the Senate, they give little evidence of formal opposition (Suetonius, Claudius 13, 36).

Question 2

2. Describe how Claudius gave the Senate more tangible power? (any relevant point for 3 marks).

Answer 2

• In 44 he returned the provinces of Achaea and Macedonia to the senate (which had been made imperial provinces by Tiberius).
• He also distributed the newly acquired imperial provinces equally between legates of senatorial and imperial rank.
• The election of magistrates was returned to the Senate, and many senatorial decrees were issued during his reign.
• He recognised the Senate’s right to mint copper coinage, but although during his reign coins with the senate’s mark increased in number, Claudius’ head never appeared on them.

Question 3

3. Describe why the relationship between Claudius and the Senate remained tense? (any relevant point for 3 marks).

Answer 3

• In 41AD the senate had declared Claudius a public enemy, and a version of the accession had him contemplating the destruction of the senatorial order, and a civil war had been raised against him which had resulted in a number of senatorial deaths.
• By forcing himself on the Senate Claudius inflicted a deep wound in its authority and self-regard.
• However, despite his apparent show of respect and his desire for the senate’s co-operation, he established a new system which he himself dominated.
• Claudius encroached on the various spheres of senatorial privilege by setting up an imperial civil service.
• The senate began to lose its importance as a partner in the government as Claudius set up special departments staffed by his own personal freedmen, who were answerable to him.
• This centralised bureaucracy was established to ‘obtain administrative efficiency, not to humble the senate and the urban magistrates’ or to increase Claudius’ autocratic power (according to Bradley).
• The proud senatorial aristocracy became embittered as they watched the emperor entrust confidential tasks to the group of freedmen belonging to his household. A new governing class was being created from men who stood outside the Roman tradition and who represented the interests of the emperor.

Question 4

4. Describe how Claudius made the Senate less powerful? (any relevant point for 3 marks).

Answer 4

• The treasury (aerarium) came to a great extent under Claudius’ control when he replaced its praetors with quaestors chosen by himself and holding their positions for three years.
• In 53, jurisdiction of financial cases in the senatorial provinces was transferred from the proconsuls to Claudius’ own personal procurators. This meant that the provincial fisci were taken from the senate.
• Claudius spent much time in the law courts hearing criminal cases. Theoretically he had a right to do this, but it had previously been handed over to the senate. He expanded his own court so that the senate would not be forced to condemn its own members if they were charged with criminal offences; Claudius is supposed to have executed 35 senators during his reign. The members of the senate were particularly bitter about these prosecutions, since they believed that these were due to the influence on Claudius of his freedmen and wives.
• On at least one occasion, and perhaps more, Claudius nominated the governor of a senatorial province. Dio records the appointment of Galba to the province of Africa.
• The senate resented this gradual encroachment, but that did not stop them voting for massive honours for the freedmen they envied and despised, especially for Pallas and Narcissus.
• Such was the subservience of the senators that they passed a copious and effusive decree rewarding Pallas for his diligence and fidelity ‘as a guardian of the emperor’s property’. Pliny comments with disgust that these men were slaves themselves.

Question 5

5. Describe how Claudius was at least far more respectful to the Senate that Gaius had been, despite tensions between then? (any relevant point for 3 marks).

Answer 5

• Claudius first behaved as if the trauma of 41 had never been inflicted, offering an amnesty for senators, conferment of consulships on republicans and possible rivals, restoration of a pompeius of his grand surname Magnus, taken away by Gaius, the burning of denunciations made to Gaius, and the return of exiles (not just Gaius’ sisters but senators).
• Claudius made unassuming deference (civilitas), making a point of rising to address consuls, and being sparing in his use of imperial dress.
• Claudius was sensitive to physical weakness and allowed a senator who could not hear the debate, L. Sulla, to sit on the praetor’s bench.
• He himself would remain seated to respond to any enquiries, but rose if his peers had been on their feet for any length of time.
• Claudius visited the sick and gave a banquet for senators and their wives, for knights and for the people in their tribes.
• Claudius was an eager participant in meetings of the house, at least until the last years of his reign, and he tried to involve them in decision making and discussion, to mitigate the damage to the relationship.
• Unlike Augustus and Tiberius, Claudius came to power having held only one suffect (replacement) consulship.
• He refrained to hold the consulship for a second time until 42, leaving in office the consuls who had presided over the 41 meetings.
• Claudius has a higher rate of SCC (senatus consulta) and imperial addresses that of any other princeps, one every 9 months.

Question 6

6. Describe Claudius’ relations with the Equestrians/Knights? (any relevant point for 3 marks).

Answer 6

• Certain privileges were extended to the equestrians, such as the right of admission into the imperial presence, identified by wearing a golden ring decorated with an image of the princeps.
• However, given the allegation that 300 equestrians were executed in his reign, combined with other vague anecdotes in Suetonius, it seems the class was not entirely favoured.
• There appear to have been less tensions in Claudius’ reign between the orders: Claudius didn’t hide his friendship with L. Julius Vestinus, the knight from Vienna, when he was speaking in the house.
• Equestrian prefects got consular insignia, and a seat in the house when they accompanied the emperor there.
• Before his accession Claudius had enjoyed cordial relations with the equestrian order, of which he was the most distinguished member, he had even acted as its spokesman before with both his predecessors.
• As princeps, he enhanced the status of knights who entered his service. Yet relations deteriorated.
• First, and most obviously, he brought freedmen into the positions of high confidence that knights had once enjoyed, at that time to the disgust of the senators.
• Less conspicuously, the philhellenism sometimes imputed to Claudius resolves itself, not only in favouritism towards Greek freedmen, but into the advancement of cultured equites from Greek-speaking provinces.
• Resentment, at least on the score of the freedmen, found its outlet in the activities of C. Silius and his many equestrian associates in 47-48.
• Levick argues 321 knights were killed.

Question 7

7. Describe Claudius’ relations with the Plebeians? (any relevant point for 3 marks).

Answer 7

• It was perhaps with the plebs that Claudius enjoyed his strongest relationship, aside from the army.
• His securing of the grain and water supplies were popular measures not to be overlooked.
• Claudius lavished largitio and entertainment upon the people (Suetonius, Claudius 21).
• Dio also surveys Claudius’ treatment of various sections of society (60.6.1-7.4), highlighting not only his eye for detail, but his concern that the city should be well-administered.
• His popularity with the plebs is clear from the rumour (attested by Suetonius) of public dismay when it had been reported that he had been killed on the Ostia road (Claudius 12).
• This affection from the people was the natural result of the degree of care and patronage that he had extended to the city and the people.
• He fully embedded the role of princeps as effectively being the pater familias to the entire roman people, a role which subsequent emperors would honour or abuse in equal measure.
• He also had a historian’s awareness that the people’s support was vital to a politician at odds with the senate, which he certainly was.
• CE stevens’ characterisation of Claudius as ‘the last of the populares’ brilliantly illustrates an important feature of his rule. He and the people needed each other.
• Relations between the emperor and the plebs were normally very warm.
• Claudius’ edicts offering homely tips on making the best of the vintage or medical matters were couched in homely language, and his free mixing with the people at shows right from the beginning won him praise.
• Picnic parties with exchange of jokes are not signs of formal correctness. Claudius’ care was reciprocated. When a rumour went around early in his reign he had been killed, the plebs were furious.
• Even when Claudius was caught in the forum in 51AD by a hungry, abusive mob and pelted with a shower of stale crusts, it was only a tiff. Octavian had once been stoned for the same offence.
• The truth was that Claudius’ precarious position disturbed the people. More than any other princeps before him Claudius depended on public confidence and support. Claudius’ needs made him sensitive to ingratitude. When Ostia failed to greet him with the customary flotilla, he told them what he thought!

Question 8

8. Describe how Claudius actively tried to win support from the Plebeians? (any relevant point for 3 marks).

Answer 8

• Claudius exploited this political position, using tribunician powers. Dealing with important matters in the senate he sometimes had the tribunician bench placed between the curule chairs of state occupied by the consuls, instead of using the chair himself, as he was entitled to do as a possessor of consular power.
• His awareness of the right of the people to a spokesman, and to the right of the rank and file to rise in the world through the practice of eloquence, was revealed when the senatorial aristocracy tried in 47 to limit the rewards payable to advocates: the Emperor was warned not to forget the plebeians had won distinction at the bar.
• The tribunes themselves showed a high profile. In 42 they summoned the senate to hold an election when one of the board died, a breach of etiquette when the consuls were in Rome.
• They may have been a particularly independent minded set, but it is significant that they thought forward behaviour worthwhile.
• In 49, when he extended the pomerium, he incorporated the Aventine hill, which symbolised the full recognition of the plebeian’s claims to consideration within the state – there need be no secessions now.