presentative of the first and second Africanus, 'should be given to him, for that, being a descendant from the kings of Arcadia, he deigned to forget his ancient nobility, to accept service under the State, and to be numbered among the ministers of the prince.' Claudius gravely assured the conscript fathers that Pallas was satisfied with the honor, and would still live in his former poverty. Thus a decree of the senate was engraven on brass, in which an enfranchised slave, possessing about two millions four hundred thousand pounds, was loaded with commendations for his primitive parsimony!"[1]
And Claudius had even worse companions than Pallas or Narcissus—the women who intrigued with them, and traded on the weak nature of an uxorious prince. In his early days, when he was looked upon as only one degree removed from an idiot, he had always been confined within the palace walls; he had lived only with his wives—he had tried only to please them; and besides them, he had had no social intercourse, except with slaves and freedmen. Of his grandmother Livia, the wife of Augustus, he was always in terror. His ungainly figure, his thick and stammering utterance, his uncouth ways, his absence of mind, made him her abomination. He was successively the husband of the profligate Messalina and the imperious Agrippina, and each of them made him their tool. Such was the training, these were the companions, of the ill-starred brother of Germanicus.
And yet the Cæsar, whom thousands of his subjects
- ↑ Annals, xii. ch. 53.
