ABSTRACT
The person to gain the greatest satisfaction from the British conquest was the Emperor Claudius. He had seized on the venture as a means of escaping from the hostility of the Senate and of swinging popular sentiment towards him, but, above all, to gain acceptance of the provincial armies as a victorious commander-in-chief. It also brought him for the first time in close personal touch with the provincials of the north-west with whom he developed a sympathy, especially towards the Gauls. Claudius, now established as an acceptable Emperor, a full member of a ruling dynasty with the loyalty of his army, felt he had every reason for a celebration to place a seal on his achievements. The events and monuments had to be carefully planned and one can glimpse the hand of Claudius himself with his leanings towards tradition and archaic antiquarianism. There were the formal honours voted by the Senate, with its underlying irony which Claudius would have relished; the triumph celebrated in 44 with officially and unofficially inspired poems of commemoration, the special issue of coins and the two triumphal arches1. A fiction was carefully maintained that the Emperor could not award himself special honours and privileges, since this was the perogative of the Senate. It must be assumed that this was all worked out with care and due attention to tradition well in advance, before, in fact, the Emperor set out on his journey. A special session of the Senate was called immediately after receiving the despatch from Cn Pompeius Magnus and L Julius Silanus2. Suitable speeches were made and Claudius was voted a triumph and the building of two triumphal arches, the sites specifically mentioned-one in Rome and the other on the Channel coast. Both Claudius and his son were given the title Britannicus, since it had become an established custom of the Senate to grant honorific titles of the names of conquered territories. What may be seen as a departure from tradition was a seat in the Senate for the Emperor’s wife, Messalina, but this followed the precedent set by Livia, the wife of Augustus3. Also Messalina had been allowed the use of the carpentum4 at state ceremonies, a right reserved for the Vestal Virgins and the consuls. These honours for the Imperial consort are an early indication of the development of the concept of royalty in the reigning dynasty, a step deliberately avoided by Augustus.
