The emperor Claudius, uncle of Caligula and brother of Germanicus, had never been adopted by Tiberius; whereas all the other emperors were, by a fiction, the sons of their predecessors. He had preserved his life in the reign of Caligula only as it were by a miracle; and he was then fifty years of age. Whilst of Caligula we can but speak as of a monster, Claudius deserves our deepest pity; yet he has done very bad things which betoken a turn for evil, though this indeed was only developed by his misfortunes. Even his mother Antonia, a daughter of the triumvir Antonius, called him a _portentum hominis_; he was an ἀτελέστον; he had capacities and talents; yet he was deficient in what really constitutes human reason, whence, in a psychological point of view, he was a real curiosity. Although he had a desire of knowledge, application, memory, and a taste for science and literature, he was wanting in judgment and discretion, so that he often said and did things which were downright stupid: it is as if a thick rind had grown round his better nature, which he but seldom broke through; there are a great many absurdities of his on record. Suetonius is very instructive with regard to him, very aptly describing his character by the Greek words ἀβλεψία and μετεωρία. The Greeks always have most adequate expressions to draw characters; those phrases mean a thoughtless absence of mind and a want of reflection, when one says what is most preposterous, and one leaves untold what ought to have been told: there was a complete disproportion between his thoughts and his power of uttering them, and this it is, what those Greek words admirably express. By the whole of his family he was knocked about, being the brother of those distinguished persons who possessed the whole love of the family. Old Augustus, who always felt such circumstances keenly, wished to keep him altogether aloof from the public gaze, whilst his grandmother Livia treated him with peculiar harshness and imperiousness. The unfortunate youth took this to heart. Had he been brought up with kindness, he would have become a good, plodding, and somewhat weak-headed man: as it was, he became vicious, and the feeling that he was despised made him a coward; so that he always kept in the background, and whenever he at all wished to put himself forward, it was but to meet with a failure. Thus he found his only comfort in literature. Livy, whose kind heart may even be seen from his work, had great pity on him, and, trying to find him some occupation, encouraged him to write history. Now, as he knew a great many things, he deemed himself to be called upon to write the history of the civil wars; and he told it in such an honest manner, that his family got very angry with him. Afterwards, he wrote memoirs of Augustus, which they allowed to pass muster, but so as only to despise their author. He was indeed thoroughly honest; yet he always got little thanks for it.