Claudius

Historical scholarship

Passages quoted verbatim from public-domain reference works. They reflect the scholarship of their time, not current consensus, and may use obsolete spellings.

• 1884From the archives

  CLAUDIUS— “lame”

  Another personal defect, namely lameness, probably was the source of the appellation of the Claudian gens, although by some the adjective _claudus_ is rejected in favour of the old verb _clueo_, from the same root as the Greek _kleo_, I hear, and _kluo_, I am called, or I am famous, meaning to be called, _i. e._, famed. The Claudii were a family of evil fame, with all the darker characteristics of the Roman, and they figure in most of the tragedies of the city. They were…

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  Another personal defect, namely lameness, probably was the source of the appellation of the Claudian gens, although by some the adjective _claudus_ is rejected in favour of the old verb _clueo_, from the same root as the Greek _kleo_, I hear, and _kluo_, I am called, or I am famous, meaning to be called, _i. e._, famed. The Claudii were a family of evil fame, with all the darker characteristics of the Roman, and they figure in most of the tragedies of the city. They were especially proud and stern, and never adopted any one into their family till the Emperor Claudius adopted Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who did not improve the fame of the Claudian surname of Nero. But the reign of the Emperor Claudius and the number of his freedmen, and new citizens, gave his gentile name an extensive vogue, and from his conquests in Britain was there much adopted. Besides, the Claudia who sends her greeting to St. Timothy in St. Paul’s Epistle, is believed to have been the daughter of a British prince and wife of Pudens, whose name is preserved in inscriptions at Colchester.

  Yonge, History of Christian Names (1884), Part IV, Chapter III (Nomina), Section VI (Claudius) · Public domain (Project Gutenberg)