ABSTRACT
Claudius came to power in AD 41. The Augustan Principate had been established nearly seventy years, but it was still developing. It owed its existence to the struggles of Republican dynasts: Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Mark Antony, and Octavian (the later Augustus), against each other and against the collective interests of the Senate. Rivalry was inherent in the Republic, exposed by a constitution that gave the supreme magistrate, the consul, power for a year with an equal colleague who could make him ineffective. After the expulsion of the last king at the end of the sixth century BC the Senate itself became an assembly of 'kings', the heads of the clans to which they owed primary loyalty, and it kept its power as an oligarchy by restricting the power of magistrates.
