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  • Explanation: As noted in the meme's text, Claudius was not exactly seen as a candidate for fame and glory from an early age. He was sickly, weak, had a stutter, drooled when excited or agitated, and his own mother thought he was an idiot and hired a mule-driver to literally beat him when he made mistakes. When his mad nephew became Emperor, he only survived by being the constant target of Caligula's mockery and jests, and playing up his disabilities, including the perception that he was in some way mentally deficient.

    His step-grandfather, the Emperor Augustus, had a mildly positive opinion of him, noting even after his mother slandered Claudius, that Claudius was an intelligent boy and quite good at reciting speeches and poems (itself sometimes noted by people with stutters in the modern day - recitations are often considerably easier than conversation), while the equites of the Empire - the class just below the Senate - chose him as their representative in his young adulthood. He spent much of his time engaged in scholarship, being a historian and a prolific writer - one of his earlier projects was a history of the Late Republic which his family pressured him to destroy rather than publish because it was too 'sensitive' - ie didn't flatter the imperial family enough.

    When he lucked into the Emperorship on a knife's edge (literally - he was almost purged by the assassins who overthrew his mad nephew, Caligula), he turned out to be a fantastic Emperor. He was deeply involved in the legal reforms of the Empire, advocating for the Senate to be opened to a wider group of citizens, including citizens from the provinces and not just Italy, granting citizenship to provincial auxiliaries who fought in the Roman armies and fleets, and reorganizing grain deliveries for Rome to ensure that food for the common people remained at a tolerable price. He lowered taxes in many areas, yet still remained a massive patron of arts and public games, and public infrastructure as well, and still left the treasury with a surplus at the time of his death.

    When he conquered Britannia, a Briton king who was to be executed in triumph, as was traditional in Rome, objected to Claudius's conquest, noting with the city of Rome being so grand, what need did the Romans have of the huts of the Britons? Claudius found this a compelling enough argument that he spared the Briton king, instead granting him an estate and a stipend to live out the rest of his days on - albeit one in Italy, where he couldn't cause any trouble for the new Roman administration in Britannia.

    I'd like to note, in a moment of Seneca-hate, that Seneca was a bootlick of Emperor Nero, who became Emperor only because his mother assassinated Claudius, so fuck Seneca's description extra hard.

  • He's also the guy who tried to institute three new letters to the alphabet:

    • ⟨Ↄ⟩ or ⟨ↃC⟩ for /ps/ [ps]. Modelled after ⟨X⟩ /ks/ [ks].
    • ⟨Ⱶ⟩ for [ɨ][ɯ][ʉ]. Not a phoneme for sure; I typically analyse it as an allophone of /u/.
    • ⟨Ⅎ⟩ for /w/ [w]~[β]. Interestingly he didn't make a new letter for /j/, but I guess it took longer to fricativise than /w/ did.

    They're useless but show some rather interesting insights. For example, the letters were modified versions of ⟨C H F⟩ - so you don't need to create new tools to press those letters (e.g. in wax, or to preview in charcoal something you'll carve in stone), you can simply adapt old tools to do it. He also showed awareness of allophones in his native language, most people don't do it at all.

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