"It is impossible to understand how such a man could have been simultaneously a laughing stock in the hands of wives and freedmen. All the documents signed by him were certainly either written or carefully reviewed by him personally, since they all display not only the same peculiar style, but also the same peculiar logic and the same manner of reasoning. The truth is [...] that only in his last years, when his mental powers were steadily declining, did Claudius allow himself to be dominated by the will of those around him; and it may be that even for this period the reality of the facts has been somewhat exaggerated by Tacitus and other writers of the senatorial party."
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Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtsev, Storia economica e sociale dell'impero romano (The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire), foreword of Gaetano De Sanctis, translation into Italian by Giovanni Sanna, «La Nuova Italia» Editrice, Firenze, 19674. Ch. III, p. 89.
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Claudius
Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (10 BC – AD 54), or Claudius, was a Roman emperor, ruling from AD 41 to 54. A member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Claudius was born to Drusus and Antonia Minor at Lugdunum in Roman Gaul, where his father was stationed as a military legate. He was the first Roman emperor to be born outside Italy.
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