Claudius (Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus)

Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was an unlikely and brilliant Roman emperor whose physical afflictions—a limp, slight deafness, and speech stammer—led his royal family to hide him away as an embarrassment. Spared during the deadly dynastic bloodbaths of Tiberius and Caligula, Claudius spent his youth becoming an accomplished historian, authoring lost histories of the Etruscans and Carthaginians.

When the Praetorian Guard assassinated Caligula in 41 CE, they found the fifty-year-old Claudius trembling behind a palace curtain and proclaimed him emperor. Proving his detractors spectacularly wrong, Claudius became an energetic, highly capable administrator. In 43 CE, he initiated the Roman conquest of Britain, personally crossing the Thames to receive the surrender of British tribal kings at Camulodunum (Colchester). He built the vital artificial deep-water harbor of Portus at Ostia, constructed the Aqua Claudia aqueduct, and established an efficient centralized bureaucracy staffed by educated freedmen. He was tragically poisoned in 54 CE by his fourth wife, Agrippina the Younger, to pave the way for her son Nero.