ABSTRACT
A courtier was preoccupied with maintaining his own position. This guaranteed loyalty to the Emperor, as long as he was secure in his supremacy, and fostered both the development of a counterweight to the inherently hostile senate and cut-throat enmities within the court. He also had to guard against his patron's mortality, as Gaius' freedman Callistus did. The monarch's successor was a focus of intrigue. Even when a monarchy is an hereditary one with established prerogatives, problems arise if the ruler leaves behind only women or minors. In the Roman Empire, failure to establish precise rules of succession has rightly been identified as a source of political weakness. But if we bear in mind the origin of the institution, and
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The exacting role of the monarch is first to keep his own power, allowing courtiers to deploy it externally only on what he sanctions. Convention or written protocol cannot guarantee that, and in the developingJulio-Claudian court there was little of either. Secondly he has to cope with disruptive internal struggles. Straightforward management takes a firm and confident personality. Claudius, with years of a weak position at court behind him, might be expected to exploit dissidence rather than check it. A central figure in Claudius' court \vas his third wife Valeria Messallina, and it will be worth looking at her position and how she defended it before going on to other influential courtiers, the freedmen, with whom she co-operated at first and then alienated.
