Family Background and Accession

About the lecture

In this lecture, we introduce the figure of Claudius, focusing in particular on: (i) a statue depicting Claudius as Jupiter, which features an Olympian body with the head of a fifty-year old man; (ii) Claudius’ unlikely route to the succession; (iii) the different factions in Rome at the time of Claudius’ succession and what they wanted from their new emperor: the army, the senate and the people of Rome; and (iv) the sources available to the modern historian for the reign of Claudius – Tacitus, Suetonius, Cassius Dio and Josephus – and the limitations of each.

About the lecturer

Matthew Nicholls is a visiting professor of classics at the University of Reading and Senior Tutor at St John's College, Oxford, specialising in the political and social history of the Romans, and the way the built environments of Rome and cities around the empire expressed their values and priorities. In 2014, Matthew was presented with a Guardian Teaching Award for his 'Virtual Rome' project, a digital model of the city of Rome, showing the city as it appeared in c. AD 315.