Excerpt from The Satire of Seneca: On the Apotheosis of Claudius Yet one can scarcely read certain chapters in Suetonius and Tacitus without doubting whether Claudius was an incompetent meddler on the throne or whether he was an enlightened statesman. In fact, he was a little of each. The constant victim of his timid dependence upon those whom he ought simply to have employed, he yet displayed what amounted to temerity, not only in attacking Augean masses of detail which might well have dismayed a stronger man, but also in running counter to estab lished prejudices by his projects of reform. The most plodding and conscientious of magistrates, he seems often on the bench to have shown a strange caprice or even a freakish frivolity. Yet at least one of the odd anecdotes told of him, of the way in which he induced an obstinate woman to acknowl edge her son, suggests the ingenuity of a Solomon. A scholar by temperament, he was noted for his stupidity, and with a low physical vitality he had appetites sensual to the point Of grossness. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.