After Caligula’s death, his nephew Claudius was discovered hiding in the palace complex. The killings of Caesonia and the baby Drusilla shows that some of the conspirators wished to remove all the Julio-Claudians and restore the Republic, but when Claudius was taken to the praetorian camp the soldiers, realising that it was to their advantage to support the imperial system, proclaimed him emperor (25 January 41).
Claudius rewarded his captors handsomely; the first emperor to make a cash gift at the time of his succession. Herod Agrippa-I announced the news as a fait accompli to the senators and with the Senate House being surrounded by armed troops the senators submitted without demur.
Claudius had an ungainly limp, perhaps from an early injury, and he drooled saliva. His contemporaries assumed that his disabilities extended to his mental capacity and because of this he was not allowed to enter the course of public offices appropriate for a young man of his ancestry. Claudius was in fact intelligent but in his youth he allowed people to continue to think he was a fool because it could save his life if the imperial family was ever in danger.
When Claudius was proclaimed emperor, there were powerful senators in command of provincial legions, any one of whom, including 16Junius Silanus (cos.28), Tarraconensis; Plautius (1) (cos.29), Pannonia; 02Arruntius Scribonianus (cos.32), Dalmatia; and 13Sulpicius Galba (71; fl.20-69), Upper Germania; could be an alternative to Claudius.
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