Claude, an emperor with a unique destiny

A little over 2,000 years ago, on August 1, 10 BC, Tiberius Claudius Drusus was born in Lyon, son of Drusus the Elder and Antonia the Younger. Despite his membership in the illustrious Julio-Claudian imperial family, Claude should never have ruled over the vast Roman empire. Destiny wanted otherwise because, 51 years later, he was proclaimed emperor by the Praetorian Guard after Caligula's assassination in 41 A.D. The exhibition aims to highlight the life and reign of this man with a unique destiny. Claude still suffers today from the unflattering portrait transmitted by ancient literature and taken up in the modern popular imagination. Described as a weak, impressionable, physically and intellectually diminished being, his image also suffers from the "sulphurous" fame of his third and fourth wives, Messalin and Agrippina, and the tragic fate of his son Britannicus. Recently, however, researchers and historians have restored the figure of a cultured man, a good manager, a promoter of effective administrative reforms for the empire and concerned about his people. His most famous law is undoubtedly that relating to the admission of the Gauls to the Roman Senate, famous for the speech he gave in 48 in Rome, engraved on bronze plaques, known as the Claudian Table.
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