... sympathetic to the modern scholars, who often see in him on of their kind. This presumably also explains the interest in his person in modern literature1. The accepted modern view of Claudius is of an innovator, who centralised the powers of the emperor, both in Rome and in his person. Whether this is in relation to judicial powers, corn distribution, or the extension of the citizenship. He is also known to have begun the development of the particular brand of bureaucracy that later helped the empire grind to halt. Our sources depict him as a cruel man, who executed up to thirty-five senators, two hundred and twenty-one knights and many others, including his own son-in-law. They depict him as a farcical weakling, who was manipulated by his wives and especially by his greedy freedmen. However our sources, be that Tacitus or Suetonius or even the Apocolocyntosis thought to be written ...

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