If we could confine our view of Claudius to the facts now stated, we might think of him as one who in many respects quite disappointed the low estimate of him that the majority of men held at the beginning of his career. But, alas! his great weakness lay in his proneness to be too easily duped and controlled by others. This was specially marked in the influence over him of his vicious wives. The first lady who was betrothed to him in his youth was repudiated by him because she was not approved by the emperor Augustus. The next died on the day appointed for the nuptials. The third, named Urgalania, became the mother of two children. One of these was choked to death by a pear he tried to swallow. Afterward Claudius divorced this wife, having discovered that she was unfaithful; and he ordered her second child to be exposed to die. The next wife was also divorced as unsuitable. The last two were Messalina and Agrippina, both of whom, as we shall see, lived to acquire great infamy. Messalina, the granddaughter of Mark Antony, was married to Claudius when he had no prospect of coming to the throne. She is said to have been at that time only fifteen years old. She became an intensely ambitious woman, of no moral principle. She was particularly jealous of Julia and Agrippina, the two nieces of the emperor, who, like herself, were brilliant but wicked women. She had no respect for her husband, and when he became emperor used her position to gain her personal ends. She was frightfully immoral. Her name, indeed, has become a byword for female depravity. She took bribes from others and wheedled presents from her husband. After the accession of Claudius, the philosopher Seneca had emerged from the obscurity into which the jealousy of Caligula had forced him. It would have been well for his own peace of mind if he had continued to pursue his reflections in private. It has been well said that all Seneca gained for himself from his career of ambition at court was to be suspected by one emperor, banished by a second, and murdered by a third.