In the last century and a half of the Republic the Neronic branch was less distinguished than that of Pulcher; no records survive of the immediate ancestors of the Emperor on the father’s side, and no Claudius Nero appears in the consular list after 204 B.C. When Horace wished to remind the Romans of their debt to the Neros, he had to go back to the battle of the Metaurus. The family had become so obscure that the genuine descent of the Emperor from the conqueror of Hasdrubal has been questioned; but it was not questioned by his contemporaries, who would have been only too glad to add the reproach of an obscure ancestry to the other indignities which they fastened upon him. It would be in accordance with the pride, and even rectitude of conduct, ascribed to the Claudians, that this branch of the family preferred comparative poverty to taking part in the scrambles for office, and interested intrigues, which marked the decadence of the Senate; and that its successive chiefs chose the dignified life of a Roman noble of the old-fashioned type, concentrating their energies rather upon the management of their ancestral domains than upon pushing themselves into the inner circle of Senators who sped to exploit the Roman conquests. Tiberius Claudius Nero, the father of the Emperor, appears first in the party of Cæsar; he was already a quæstor, and while holding that office commanded the fleet which besieged Alexandria, and rescued Cæsar from the insurrection of the Alexandrians; he was rewarded by being made a Pontifex, and entrusted with the establishment of colonies in Gaul, at Narbonne and Arles among other places. This was work which required considerable tact; it was not always easy to satisfy both the veterans who formed the colony and the population whom they displaced. Cæsar was not in the habit of employing incompetent agents, and the selection of Tiberius Nero for this work is an evidence of his capacity. After the assassination of Cæsar he became a warm partisan of the Liberators; he is even said to have proposed in the Senate that the Tyrannicides should be rewarded, when others thought that an amnesty was sufficient for their deserts. It is not clear whether he was Prætor at this time or shortly afterwards, but he certainly held that office when Lucius Antonius and Fulvia making a diversion against Octavian at Præneste; before the fall of Præneste he had slipped away to Campania, and endeavoured to form an army from the proprietors in that district who were threatened with the confiscation of their land for the benefit of Octavian’s soldiers; in this enterprise he was unsuccessful, and had to flee for his life to Sicily, where he took refuge for a short time with Sextus Pompeius.