Claudius Gothicus

• 1. Introduction

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  Marcus Aurelius Claudius, remembered today as Claudius Gothicus, once knocked out a horse's teeth with a single punch, or so an ancient legend claims. That brute strength carried him from the ranks of the Roman army to the imperial throne in 268. He ruled for barely two years, defeating Rome's enemies on several fronts before a pestilence killed him in the late summer of 270. Ancient writers disagree on almost every detail of his life, from the year he was born to the very month he died. Centuries later, his story would be folded into two very different legends, one concerning an emperor's bloodline and another concerning a Christian saint. Why did both need Claudius Gothicus to be someone he probably was not, and how did a soldier known mainly for his fists end up ruling an empire in crisis?

• 2. Origins And Rise

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  The Historia Augusta, a collection of imperial biographies, supplies the only surviving account of Claudius's early years. It mixes genuine information with fabrications and obsequious praise, so historians handle it with real caution. To check its claims, they turn to Aurelius Victor, Pseudo-Aurelius Victor, Eutropius, Orosius, Joannes Zonaras, and Zosimus, along with surviving coins and inscriptions.

  Most historians place Claudius's birth on the 10th of May 214, though some researchers argue for a later date of 219 or 220. The 6th century Byzantine historian John Malalas wrote that Claudius was 56 years old at his death, a detail that supports the earlier year. His birthplace was never recorded, though he may have come from somewhere near the Danube.

  The 4th century Epitome de Caesaribus claims Claudius was an illegitimate son of the emperor Gordian II, a claim some historians doubt. The Historia Augusta separately lists him as a member of the gens Flavia, likely an effort to tie him to the later emperor Flavius Valerius Constantius.

  Decius ruled Rome from 249 to 251, and the Historia Augusta places Claudius in his reign as a military tribune. He was later sent to defend the pass at Thermopylae, with the governor of Achaea ordered to supply him troops. Modern historians doubt that story; the Goths active in that era never threatened the area beyond the middle Balkans, and the real garrison at Thermopylae only appeared in 254. Historian François Pashau argues the episode was invented for a later purpose, to contrast the successful pagan commander Claudius with the failed Christian generals who let the Gothic leader Alaric I ravage Greece in 396.

  A wrestling match sometime in the 250s turned violent when Claudius's opponent tried to disable him by seizing his genitals. Claudius knocked the man's teeth out in response. Aurelius Victor recorded that Decius had already rewarded Claudius for his strength after watching him beat another soldier in a contest at the Games of Mars.

  When Gallienus was murdered, with Claudius rumored to have had a hand in it, Claudius softened his reputation for violence and asked the Senate to spare the dead emperor's family and supporters. Toward Rome's actual enemies he remained as harsh as ever, and that harshness helped make him popular with his troops. The army proclaimed him emperor in 268. Like Maximinus Thrax before him, Claudius came from what Romans considered a barbarian lineage, and after a run of failed aristocratic rulers, he became the first of a new breed of tough soldier emperors. Their task was to pull the empire out of the Crisis of the Third Century. That same year, Gallienus was killed in a plot ancient writers could not agree on, and rumors immediately swirled around a Praetorian Prefect named Aurelius Heraclianus.

• 3. The Fall Of Gallienus

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  By the 260s, the Roman Empire had split into three competing courts: the core empire, the Gallic Empire in the west, and the Palmyrene Empire in the east. Gallienus had failed to defeat the usurper Postumus, and had allowed Odaenathus to rule a de facto independent kingdom in the east. In 268, that balance broke: Odaenathus was assassinated, likely due to court intrigue, and Gallienus himself fell victim to a mutiny within his own ranks. Power in the east passed to Odaenathus's young son, who was dominated by his mother, Zenobia.

  In 265, Gallienus crossed the Alps and besieged Postumus inside an unnamed Gallic city. Victory seemed close until Gallienus approached the walls too closely and was badly wounded, forcing him to break off the campaign. Over the next three years his troubles multiplied. Scythians invaded the Balkans in early 268. Aureolus, a cavalry commander stationed in Milan, declared himself an ally of Postumus and claimed the imperial throne for himself. That same year, a group called the Herulians moved through Asia Minor and into Greece by sea. Gallienus left the invasion for his successor to handle.

  Senior officials wanted Gallienus dead, and most accounts name Aurelius Heraclianus, the Praetorian Prefect, as the prime conspirator. One version has Heraclianus bringing Claudius into the plot, while the Historia Augusta clears Claudius and names the general Lucius Aurelius Marcianus instead. Historians suspect Claudius was written out of the story later, once he had become useful as a fictional ancestor of the house of Constantine.

  One account describes Gallienus sitting down to dinner when he was told that Aureolus and his men were approaching the camp. He rushed to the front lines and was struck down by one of his own cavalry commanders. A more elaborate version claims Aureolus forged a document showing Gallienus plotting against his own generals. He made sure it reached the emperor's senior staff. That plot named the future emperor Aurelian as a possible conspirator too.

  Gallienus was killed in the summer of 268, most likely between July and October, and the army outside Milan chose Claudius to succeed him. News of the new emperor set off a wave of violence against Gallienus's own family. It only stopped once Claudius declared he would honor his predecessor's memory. Claudius had Gallienus deified and buried in a family tomb on the Appian Way. Aureolus received no such mercy. His besiegers killed him after a failed attempt to surrender. Claudius took the throne of an empire already under invasion, with Gothic armies pouring into Illyricum and Pannonia.

• 4. Victories That Earned A Name

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  Gallienus had already damaged the invading Goths at the Battle of Nestus before his death. Soon after becoming emperor, Claudius won the greatest victory of his reign, one of the greatest in Roman military history. At the Battle of Naissus, Claudius and his legions routed a huge Gothic army. Fighting alongside his cavalry commander, the future emperor Aurelian, the Romans took thousands of prisoners and destroyed the Gothic cavalry as a fighting force.

  That victory earned Claudius his surname, Gothicus, meaning conqueror of the Goths. Aurelian drove the survivors back across the Danube, and nearly a century passed before the Goths threatened the empire again.

  Around the same time, the Alamanni crossed the Alps to attack the empire. Claudius routed them at the Battle of Lake Benacus in the late fall of 268, just months after Naissus, and was awarded the title Germanicus Maximus for the win.

  Claudius then turned against the Gallic Empire, which a pretender had ruled for the previous eight years across Britain, Gaul, and the Iberian Peninsula. He won several victories there, regaining control of Hispania and the Rhone river valley. That set the stage for Aurelian to later destroy the Gallic Empire completely. These military wins reshaped who held power in Rome itself, opening doors for a new class of Balkan-born officers.

• 5. Ruling A Fractured Empire

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  Before Claudius, only two Roman emperors had come from the Balkans. After him, only one emperor who did not come from Pannonia, Moesia, or Illyricum ruled before 378. In 378, Theodosius I, from Hispania, took the throne.

  Four surviving inscriptions offer a glimpse of the government under Claudius. One is a dedication to Aurelius Heraclianus from an official named Traianus Mucianus. Mucianus also honored Heraclianus's brother, Aurelius Appollinaris, the equestrian governor of Thracia in 267-68. A third inscription traces the career of the general Marcianus, and a fourth honors Julius Placidianus, prefect of the vigiles. None of these men belonged to the old Severan aristocracy. All of them owed their prominence to military service.

  Marcus Aurelius Probus, another future emperor, also came from a Balkan family enfranchised under Caracalla. Yet the older aristocracy still held influence. Claudius shared the consulship of 269 with Paternus, of the prominent senatorial Paterni family. Other consular posts in these years went to men from established houses too: Flavius Antiochianus, Virius Orfitus, Pomponius Bassus, and Junius Veldumnianus. In his first full year in power, Claudius would be handed an unexpected gift: the sudden unraveling of the rival Gallic Empire.

• 6. The Empire Comes Apart

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  In the spring of 269, Ulpius Cornelius Laelianus, a high official under Postumus, declared himself emperor in Germania Superior. Postumus defeated him but refused to let his own troops sack Mainz, Laelianus's headquarters. Out of anger, Postumus's army mutinied and killed him.

  The troops chose Marcus Aurelius Marius to replace Postumus, but his rule did not last. Postumus's own praetorian prefect, Victorinus, defeated Marius and took the Gallic throne himself. Victorinus's position quickly grew shaky: the Spanish provinces deserted to Claudius, and in southern Gaul, Placidianus captured the city of Grenoble before his advance stalled.

  The following year, the city of Autun declared for Claudius, but the central government sent no help. After a siege lasting many weeks, Victorinus captured and sacked the city.

  Relations with Palmyra were fraying across 269 as well. The dispute centered on the title corrector totius orientis, which gave Odaenathus command of Roman armies and authority over provincial governors in the east. After Odaenathus's death, Zenobia claimed the title for her son Vaballathus. No coin had ever carried Odaenathus's face. Coins bearing his son's image soon appeared, a sign the boy's authority was reaching beyond what any emperor had granted him.

  Under the general Zabdas, a Palmyrene army invaded Arabia and pushed into Egypt in the late summer. Tenagino Probus, the prefect of Egypt, had already defeated an invasion of Cyrenaica in 269 and hunted down Scythian ships in the Mediterranean. In Egypt he had no such luck. A Palmyrene-allied force led by Timagenes defeated his army and killed him near the modern city of Cairo in the late summer of 270.

  The historian David Potter has written that Vaballathus's coins stopped short of claiming imperial power. Potter notes he remained "vir consularis, rex, imperator, dux Romanorum, a range of titles that did not mimic those of the central government." Meanwhile, the state's coffers were strained: the silver content of the antoninianus coin was diluted yet again. By late 269, Claudius had already turned his attention to a new threat: Vandal raiders in Pannonia, and a march toward the city of Sirmium.

• 7. A Sudden Death

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  Late in 269, Claudius traveled to Sirmium to prepare for war against the Vandals, who were raiding in Pannonia. He never got the chance to fight them. He fell victim to the Plague of Cyprian, possibly smallpox, and died early in 270. He is thought to have named Aurelian as his successor before he died, though his brother Quintillus briefly seized power first. The Senate immediately deified him as Divus Claudius Gothicus.

  Historians place Claudius's death in January, April, August, or September, depending on which conflicting source they follow. The Chronograph of 354 gives him a reign of one year and four months. Jerome and Aurelius Victor both give one year and nine months instead.

  Some Alexandrian coins dated to Claudius's third year suggest he died in September of 270, since the Coptic calendar began on the 29th of August. The historian Arthur Stein instead dated the death to April, citing a document of Aurelian's that he placed on the 25th of May 270. Modern scholars now believe that document actually dates to 271.

  The last confirmed document from Claudius's reign is dated to the 20th of September 270. An undated papyrus survives that some scholars tentatively place in October of that year.

  Before campaigning against the Goths, Claudius consulted the Sibylline Books, according to Aurelius Victor's De Caesaribus, written in 361. Victor wrote that Claudius "revived the tradition of the Decii," a line that reflects the senatorial view of Gallienus as too relaxed about religious policy. Long after his death, storytellers found it useful that Constantine I had been born at Naissus, the very city where Claudius won his greatest victory.

• 8. Legends After Death

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  The unreliable Historia Augusta gives Claudius and Quintillus another brother, named Crispus, and through him a niece named Claudia. Claudia supposedly married a man named Eutropius and became the mother of Constantius Chlorus. Zonaras and Eutropius instead claim Constantius Chlorus was the son of Claudia's daughter. Historians suspect the entire genealogy was invented to connect Constantine I's family to a well-respected emperor.

  Claudius Gothicus has also been linked to Saint Valentine since the Middle Ages. Any contemporary records of his reign were likely destroyed during the Diocletianic Persecution in the early 4th century. A tale of Valentine's martyrdom was later recorded in a work called Passio Marii et Marthae, written in the 5th or 6th century. 20th century historians agree that none of these accounts can be verified.

  The legend names only "Emperor Claudius." Claudius I did not persecute Christians, apart from a single mention by Suetonius of Jewish followers of someone called "Chrestus" being expelled from Rome. That has led people to assume the emperor in the legend was Claudius II instead. He spent nearly all of his short reign fighting outside his own territory.

  The story was retold in the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493. It describes a Roman priest beaten with clubs and beheaded for aiding Christians during a general persecution. The Golden Legend of 1260 has Valentine refusing to deny Christ before "Emperor Claudius" in 270, and being beheaded as a result. Since then, the 14th of February has marked Valentine's Day, set aside by the Christian church in memory of the Roman priest and physician. Each the 14th of February, that mix-up between two emperors named Claudius is still remembered, long after the Battle of Naissus that actually made his name.