I, Claudius
Aurelius Victor states that Claudius had to repair the legacy of Caligula:
The shortage of food, which arose under Caligula, was also eliminated [by Claudius], when he [Caligula], having gathered ships from all over the world, planned, to the detriment of public interests, to turn the sea into a theater and an arena for horse riding. The food shortage was such that the people in Rome started protesting vehemently. Suetonius describes how things got frighteningly close to Claudius, physically:
Claudius always gave scrupulous attention to the care of the city and the supply of grain. On the occasion of a stubborn fire in the Aemiliana he remained in the Diribitorium for two nights, and when a body of soldiers and of his own slaves could not give sufficient help, he summoned the commons from all parts of the city through the magistrates, and placing bags full of money before them, urged them to the rescue, paying each man on the spot a suitable reward for his services. When there was a scarcity of grain because of long-continued droughts, he was once stopped in the middle of the Forum by a mob and so pelted with abuse and at the same time with pieces of bread, that he was barely able to make his escape to the Palace by a back door; and after this experience he resorted to every possible means to bring grain to Rome, even in the winter season. To the merchants he held out the certainty of profit by assuming the expense of any loss that they might suffer from storms, and offered to those who would build merchant ships large bounties, adapted to the condition of each: to a citizen exemption from the lex Papia Poppaea; to a Latin the rights of Roman citizenship; to women the privileges allowed the mothers of four children. And all these provisions are in force to-day. Measures had to be taken, and that is precisely what Claudius did. As to the harbour: plans had already been made by Julius Caesar, and these would now be realized. Let's listen to Suetonius first.
The public works which he completed were great and essential rather than numerous; they were in particular the following: an aqueduct begun by Gaius; also the outlet of Lake Fucinus and the harbour at Ostia, although in the case of the last two he knew that Augustus had refused the former to the Marsians in spite of their frequent requests, and that the latter had often been thought of by the Deified Julius, but given up because of its difficulty. He brought to the city on stone arches the cool and abundant founts of the Claudian aqueduct, one of which is called Caeruleus and the other Curtius and Albudignus, and at the same time the spring of the new Anio, distributing them into many beautifully ornamented pools. He made the attempt on the Fucine lake as much in the hope of gain as of glory, inasmuch as there were some who agreed to drain it at their own cost, provided the land that was uncovered be given to them. He finished the outlet, which was three miles in length, partly by levelling and partly by tunnelling a mountain, a work of great difficulty and requiring eleven years, although he had thirty thousand men at work all the time without interruption. He constructed the harbour at Ostia by building curving breakwaters on the right and left, while before the entrance he placed a mole in deep water. To give this mole a firmer foundation, he first sank the ship in which the great obelisk had been brought from Egypt, and then securing it by piles, built upon it a very lofty tower after the model of the Pharos at Alexandria, to be lighted at night and guide the course of ships.
Claudius studies Caesar's plan of the harbour of Portus.
Screenshot from the TV-series "I, Claudius", episode "Fool's luck", featuring Derek Jacobi (1976).Here is what Cassius Dio has to say about it:
On the occasion of a severe famine he considered the problem of providing an abundant food-supply, not only for that particular crisis but for all future time. For practically all the grain used by the Romans was imported, and yet the region near the month of the Tiber had no safe landing-places or suitable harbours, so that their mastery of the sea was rendered useless to them. Except for the cargoes brought in during the summer season and stored in warehouses, they had no supplies for the winter; for if any one ever risked a voyage at that season, he was sure to meet with disaster. In view of this situation, Claudius undertook to construct a harbour, and would not be deterred even when the architects, upon his enquiring how great the cost would be, answered, "You don't want to do it!". So confident were they that the huge expenditures necessary would shake him from his purpose, if he should learn the cost beforehand. He, however, conceived an undertaking worthy of the dignity and greatness of Rome, and he brought it to accomplishment. In the first place, he excavated a very considerable tract of land, built retaining walls on every side of the excavation, and then let the sea into it; secondly, in the sea itself he constructed huge moles on both sides of the entrance and thus enclosed a large body of water, in the midst of which he reared an island and placed on it a tower with a beacon light. This harbour, then, as it is still called in local parlance, was created by him at this time. He furthermore desired to make an outlet into the Liris for the Fucine Lake in the Marsian country, in order not only that the land around it might be tilled but also that the river might be made more navigable. But the money was expended in vain. The work was begun in 42 AD. It involved both the construction of a huge basin and the digging out of canals. Pliny the Younger saw similar work ongoing, half a century later in Centumcellae (Civitavecchia), a bit further to the north:
I was delighted to be summoned by the Emperor [Trajanus] to act as his assessor at Centum Cellae, where I am now. The house is really beautiful: it is surrounded by green fields and faces the sea-shore, where a natural bay is being converted with all speed into a harbour. The left arm has already been reinforced by a solid mole and the right is in process of construction. At the entrance to the harbour an island is rising out of the water to act as a breakwater when the wind blows inland, and so give a safe passage to ships entering from either side. Its construction is well worth seeing. Huge stones are brought by large barges and thrown out one on top of another facing the harbour; their weight keeps them in position and the pile gradually rises in a sort of rampart. A hump of rocks can already be seen sticking up, which breaks the waves beating against it and tosses them high into the air with a resounding crash, so that the sea all round is white with foam. Later on piers will be built on the stone foundation, and as time goes on it will look like a natural island. The harbour will be called after its maker, and is in fact already known by his name; and it will save countless lives by providing a haven on this long stretch of harbourless coast.
Digging the Suez Canal in the early 1860s.
Photo: lindahall.org.The lighthouse of Portus, an imitatio and aemulatio of the Pharos of Alexandria, more than 100 meters high, was particularly impressive. Pliny the Elder mentions the two "towers" in the same breath:
Another towering structure built by a king is also extolled, namely the one that stands on Pharos, the island that commands the harbour at Alexandria. The tower is said to have cost 800 talents. We should not fail to mention the generous spirit shown by King Ptolemy, whereby he allowed the name of the architect, Sostratus of Cnidos, to be inscribed on the very fabric of the building. It serves, in connection with the movements of ships at night, to show a beacon so as to give warning of shoals and indicate the entrance to the harbour. Similar beacons now burn brightly in several places, for instance at Ostia and Ravenna. The danger lies in the uninterrupted burning of the beacon, in case it should be mistaken for a star, the appearance of the fire from a distance being similar. During the reign of Vespasianus, Valerius Flaccus mentions the lighthouse in his epic poem Argonautica:
Not so thunderstruck stands the Ionian or Tyrrhenian skipper, when, as he gazes towards Tiber and the lighthouse clearly sighted 'neath a summer sky, suddenly driven headlong he sees nowhere the river mouth, nowhere Ausonia [Italy], but the fierce Syrtes [shoals of North Africa] drawing nigh. Juvenalis mentions the lighthouse, the tremendous size of the basin, and sailors arriving "there" and shaving their head. The shaving has been interpreted as a vow, a promise made in the face of imminent shipwreck. Michele Ronnick argues, based on the context, that "there" is a reference to a temple of Isis.
And now at length the ship comes within the moles built out to enclose the sea. She passes the Tyrrhenian lighthouse, and those arms which stretch out and meet again in mid-Ocean, leaving Italy far behind - a port more wondrous far than those of Nature's making. Then the skipper, with his crippled ship, makes for the still waters of the inner basin in which any Baian shallop may ride in safety. There the sailors shave their heads and delight, in garrulous ease, to tell the story of their perils.
The area of the harbour of Claudius with indication of the lighthouse and the moles. Seen from the west. Trajan's hexagon is in the background.
The location of the lighthouse was discovered, through drilling, by the late Antonia Arnoldus-Huyzendveld.
Photo: Wikimedia, Julo.We hear of frequent stays of Claudius in Ostia and Portus. One trip to Ostia, in 43 AD, led to rumours, as recounted by Suetonius:
By such conduct he won so much love and devotion in a short time, that when it was reported that he had been waylaid and killed on a journey to Ostia, the people were horror stricken and with dreadful execrations continued to assail the soldiers as traitors, and the senate as murderers, until finally one or two men, and later several, were brought forward upon the rostra by the magistrates and assured the people that Claudius was safe and on his way to the city. On another occasion he improvised a show for the people in Portus. Pliny the Elder tells us:
A killer whale was actually seen in the harbour of Ostia, locked in combat with the emperor Claudius. She had come when he was completing the construction of the harbor, drawn there by the wreck of a ship bringing leather hides from Gaul, and feeding there over a number of days, had made a furrow in the shallows: the waves had raised up such a mound of sand that she couldn't turn around at all, and while she was pursuing her banquet as the waves moved it shorewards, her back stuck up out of the water like the overturned keel of a boat. The emperor ordered that a large array of nets be stretched across the mouths of the harbor, and setting out in person with the praetorian cohorts gave a show to the Roman people, soldiers showering lances from attacking ships, one of which I saw swamped by the beast's waterspout and sunk.
An engraving of Claudius's whale hunt by Jan van der Straet, made around 1595.On two occasions Claudius clashed with the people of Ostia. Both were recorded by Suetonius.
He was conscious of his tendency to wrath and resentment and excused both in an edict; he also drew a distinction between them, promising that the former would be short and harmless and the latter not without cause. After sharply rebuking the people of Ostia, because they had sent no boats to meet him when he entered the Tiber, and in such bitter terms that he wrote that they had reduced him to the rank of a commoner, he suddenly forgave them and all but apologised.
When the people of Ostia made a public petition to him, he flew into a rage on the very tribunal and bawled out that he had no reason for obliging them; that he was surely free if anyone was. In 43 AD Claudius departed from Ostia to partake in the conquest of Britain. Suetonius was not impressed:
He made but one campaign and that of little importance. When the senate voted him the triumphal regalia, thinking the honour beneath the imperial dignity and desiring the glory of a legitimate triumph, he chose Britain as the best place for gaining it, a land that had been attempted by no one since the Deified Julius and was just at that time in a state of rebellion because of the refusal to return certain deserters. On the voyage thither from Ostia he was nearly cast away twice in furious north-westers, off Liguria and near the Stoechades islands [small islands off the coast of Marseille]. Therefore he made the journey from Massilia [Marseille] all the way to Gesoriacum [Boulogne-sur-Mer] by land, crossed from there, and without any battle or bloodshed received the submission of a part of the island, returned to Rome within six months after leaving the city, and celebrated a triumph of great splendour. Cassius Dio's account is matter-of-fact:
When the message reached him, Claudius entrusted affairs at home, including the command of the troops, to his colleague Lucius Vitellius, whom he had caused to remain in office like himself for a whole half-year; and he himself then set out for the front. He sailed down the river to Ostia, and from there followed the coast to Massilia; thence, advancing partly by land and partly along the rivers, he came to the ocean and crossed over to Britain, where he joined the legions that were waiting for him near the Thames. Aurelius Victor, using other historians in the fourth century, keeps it short:
The island of Britain is the only conquest to which Claudius himself went by sea from Ostia; the rest are the work of his generals.
Details of a mosaic from the period of Claudius below the Via dei Vigili.
Personifications of Egypt (with crocodile), Africa (with elephant's head and tusks), Sicily (with the so-called triskeles) and Spain (with an olive wreath).
Photos: Klaus Heese and Scavi di Ostia IV, Tav. 123.Claudius also worked on the administration of Ostia and Portus. He withdrew the Quaestor Ostiensis, says Suetonius, and replaced him by procurators:
He obliged the college of quaestors to give a gladiatorial show in place of paving the roads; then depriving them of their official duties at Ostia and in Gaul, he restored to them the charge of the treasury of Saturn, which had in the meantime been administered by praetors, or by ex-praetors, as in our time. We have already seen how, during the reign of Tiberius, panic arose when a fire in Ostia was suspected. Claudius took action, reported by Suetonius:
He provided by an edict that travellers should not pass through the towns of Italy except on foot, or in a chair or litter. He stationed a cohort at Puteoli and one at Ostia, to guard against the danger of fires.
