Gens Claudia

Few Roman families could match the Claudii. Suetonius counts twenty-eight consulships, five dictatorships, seven censorships, six triumphs and two ovations to their name. By tradition their founder, Attus Clausus, came to Rome from Regillum around 504 BC. The best known of his descendants under the Republic was Appius Claudius Caecus, censor in 312 BC, who built the Via Appia and the Aqua Appia, Rome's first aqueduct, and who, blind in old age, spoke in the Senate against peace with Pyrrhus around 280 BC.

The family had its share of scandal. Publius Claudius Pulcher, consul in 249 BC, is said to have thrown the sacred chickens overboard before he lost most of his fleet at Drepana. Publius Clodius Pulcher became a plebeian to stand as tribune and was killed on his ancestor's road, the Via Appia; his sister Clodia Metelli is often identified with Catullus's Lesbia, though this is debated. Through Livia and her first husband, Tiberius Claudius Nero, the line reached the throne. Their son Tiberius was adopted by Augustus into the Julii in AD 4, and their grandson Claudius ruled from AD 41. Claudius adopted Nero in AD 50.