Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/831

Rh him with the dignity of consul. His first wife was Plautia Urgulauilla, whom he divorced because he suspected her of designs against his life ; his second, ^Elia Petina, was also divorced ; and his third was the infamous Valeria Messalina. In 41 A.D., on the murder of Caligula, Claudius was seized by the pnetorians, and declared emperor. As soon as he gained resolution to assume the authority of his office, he proclaimed an amnesty for all except Chaerea, the assassin of his predecessor, and one or two others. The account, however, of his painstaking government, his laborious personal administration of justice, his conquest of Britain, his extension of ikejushonorum to the Gauls, his construc tion of the Claudian aqueduct and the harbour of Ostia, are matters of history (see ). The cruelties of his reign appear to have been due to the facility of character which placed him completely under the influence of his favourite freedmen, of whom the most conspicuous were Xarcissus, Pallas, and Polybius, and of his wife, the vicious and shameless Messalina, whom he fondly loved and honoured. At length, according to the account of Tacitus, Messalina went through the ceremony of marriage with one of her lovers, and urged by her former confederate Narcissus, the emperor allowed her to be seized, and Narcissus put her to death. Suetonius throws a some what different light on the story, making it rather more probable, for he tells us that there was a rumour that the emperor desired and assisted in the marriage, because he had been warned by a soothsayer that the husband of Messalina was about to fall into misfortune. The next and fourth wife of Claudius was his niece Agrippina, a woman as criminal as any of her predecessors. She pre vailed upon him to set aside his own son Britannicus in favour of Nero, her son by a former marriage ; and in 54 A.D., that she might place the act beyond recall, she put the emperor to death by means of poison.|1}} Encouraged by Livy, as Suetonius asserts, and assisted by the freedmen who attended him, Claudius produced a history of Rome, commencing with the battle of Actium (31 B.C.), in 41 books, a defence of Cicero against Asinius Pollio, memoirs of his own life, and, in Greek, a history of Carthage and a history of Etruria ; but none of his writ ings have come down to us. He introduced three new letters into the Latin alphabet the digamma, the if/, and another not now known ; but they appear to have been dropped at his death. The principal authority for the life and times of Claudius is the Annals of Tacitus, in whose high-coloured pictures there is much that gives rise to a suspicion of exaggera tion. Suetonius and Dion Cassiusare even less trustworthy.  CLAUDIUS,,, the second of the Roman emperors of the name of Claudius, was born in Illyria or Dardania in the first half of the 3d century. On account of his military ability he was placed in command of an army by Decius ; and Valerian appointed him general on the Illyrian frontier, and ruler of the pro vinces of the lower Danube. During the reign of Gallienus, he was called to Italy in order to crush Aureolus; and, on the death of the empsror (2G8 A.D.) he was chosen as his successor, in accordance, it was said, with his express desire. He enjoyed great popularity, and, as far as we can now judge, he appears to have been a man of considerable ability and strength of character. The account of his reign belongs to the history of Rome.  CLAUDIUS, (1743-1815), a German poet, otherwise known by the nom de plume of Asmus, was born in 1 743 at Rheinfekl, near Lubeck, and studied at Jena. With the exception of a short time in 1776 and 1777, when he held the office of superior commissioner or Ober- landcommissar at Darmstadt, he spent his life in the little town of Wandsbeck, near Hamburg, for which he had conceived so strong an attachment that he would not accept any appointment which required him to settle elsewhere. Here he earned his first literary reputation by the publica tion, from 1770 to 1775, of a weekly periodical called the WandsLecker Bote or Wandsbeck Messenger, in which he gave to the world a large number of prose essays and poems of various kinds. They were written in very pure and simple German, and appealed to the popular taste ; in many there was a vein of extravagant humour or even burlesque, while others were full of quiet meditation and solemn sentiment. In his later days, perhaps through the influence of Klopstock, with whom he had formed an intimate acquaint ance, Claudius became strongly pietistic, and the graver side of his nature was alone permitted to display itself. Instead of firing the German heart with a Bheinweinlied, or shaking the German sides with a Wenn Jemand eine Heist thut, he translated the works of Saint Martin and Fenelon. At the same time, he thought it no harm to publish a com plete collection of his writings, under the whimsical title of Asmus omnict sua secum portans, oder Sammtliche WerJce des Wandsbecker Bothen, 8 vols. 1774-1812. His biography has been written by Herbst (Gotha, 1857) ; and Kahle has given us Claudius und Iltlel (Berlin, 1864).  CLAVIJO,, a Spanish traveller (f the 15th century, whose narrative is the first important one of its kind contributed to Spanish literature. He was a native of Madrid, and belonged to a family of some an tiquity and position. On the return of the ambassadors Solomayor and Palazuelos from the East, Henry III. deter mined to send another embassy to the court of Timur, who had just risen to power, and for this purpose he selected Clavijo, Gomez de Salazar, and a master of theo logy named Fray Alonzo Paez de Santa Maria. They sailed from Seville in May 1403, touched at the Balearic Isles, Gaeta, and Rhodes, spent some time at Constantinople, sailed along the southern coast of the Black Sea to Trebi- zond, and proceeded inland, probably by Etchimazin, Tab reez, Tehran, and Meshud, to Samarcand, where they were well received by the conqueror. Their return was safely accom plished^ and they landed in Spain in 1406. Clavijo proceed ed at once to the court, at that time in Alcala de Henares, and served as chamberlain till the king s death in the follow ing year ; he then returned to Madrid, and lived there in opulence till his own death in April 1412. He was buried in the chapel of the monastery of San Francisco, which he had rebuilt at great expense. His itinerary was first published in 1582 at Seville, by Argote de Molina, with the title of Ilistoria del gran Tamorlan e itinerario y enarracion del mage y reladon de la embaxada que Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo le hizo, the editor appending &quot; a short discourse,&quot; for the better intelligence of his author. Another edition was brought out at Madrid in 1782, by Antonio de Sancha ; and from this an English translation was prepared by Clements Markham, and published by the Hakluyt Society in 1860. The identification of a great number of the places mentioned by Clavijo is a matter of considerable difficulty, and has given rise to some discussion (see Khanikof s list in Geographical Magazine, 1874). A short account of his life is given by Alvarez y Baena in the Hijos de Madrid, vol. ix.|1}}  CLAY, (1777-1852), a celebrated American politician, born near Richmond, in Virginia, on the 12th April 1777, was the son of a Baptist minister, who died when Henry was only five years old. His youth was consequently spent in some hardship, and for a time he worked on a farm; but at the age of fifteen he obtained a situation in the office of the clerk of the Court of Chancery. Having gained some influential friends, he began in 1796 to study law under Robert Brooke, the attorney-general. In 1797 he was admitted to the bar, and in the end of that year he