The emperor claudius triumphant

- ad 43 -

After Caesar’s hasty departure in 54 bc, it was more than ninety years before the Romans tried to conquer Britain again – and when they eventually landed, they made the most of their triumph. In ad 43 the forty-thousand-strong army pushed resistance aside as it rolled up through Kent to the Thames, where the men were ordered to halt. The emperor Claudius wanted to catch up with them, and he duly arrived in splendour for the advance into modern Colchester, the principal British settlement of the south-east. The Roman victory parade featured a squadron of elephants, whose exotic appearance must have been greeted with amazement as they plodded through the Kent countryside.

Swaying a dozen feet above the ground, the club-footed but canny Claudius proudly claimed Colchester as the capital of Rome’s latest province. Straight streets were laid down, with a forum and amphitheatre, and the showpiece was a high, rectangular, white-pillared temple. Roman veterans were given land around the town, in the centre of which rose a statue of the emperor. With firm chin, large nose and slicked-down hair, the statue made Claudius look remarkably like Julius Caesar.

Claudius was considered a rather comical character by his contemporaries, who secretly mocked his physical handicaps. His dragging right foot was probably the result of brain damage at birth – his head and hands shook slightly – and he had a cracked, throaty and scarcely intelligible voice which, according to one of his enemies, belonged ‘to no land animal’. But as someone who had often found himself in the hands of doctors, he had a high regard for healing. He managed a soothing tone when dealing with the local chieftains of Britain, acknowledging that they had rights. He honoured them as ‘kings’ – which, in turn, boosted his own status as their emperor. Then in ad 54 Claudius died, to be succeeded by his stepson Nero, whose name would become proverbial for wilfulness and cruelty.

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