He then visited the strongest governments, and was eager to recover Armenia, but was stopped by Vibius Marsus, governor of Syria, who threatened war.Meanwhile Gotarzes, who repented of having relinquished his throne, at the solicitation of the nobility, to whom subjection is a special hardship in peace, collected a force.Vardanes marched against him to the river Charinda; a fierce battle was fought over the passage, Vardanes winning a complete victory, and in a series of successful engagements subduing the intermediate tribes as far as the river Sindes, which is the boundary between the Dahae and the Arians.There his successes terminated.The Parthians, victorious though they were, rebelled against distant service.So after erecting monuments on which he recorded his greatness, and the tribute won from peoples from whom no Arsacid had won it before, he returned covered with glory, and therefore the more haughty and more intolerable to his subjects than ever.They arranged a plot, and slew him when he was off his guard and intent upon the chase.He was still in his first youth, and might have been one of the illustrious few among aged princes, had he sought to be loved by his subjects as much as to be feared by his foes.
The murder of Vardanes threw the affairs of Parthia into confusion, as the people were in doubt who should be summoned to the throne.Many inclined to Gotarzes, some to Meherdates, a descendant of Phraates, who was a hostage in our hands.Finally Gotarzes prevailed.Established in the palace, he drove the Parthians by his cruelty and profligacy to send a secret entreaty to the Roman emperor that Meherdates might be allowed to mount the throne of his ancestors.
It was during this consulship, in the eight hundredth year after the foundation of Rome and the sixty-fourth after their celebration by Augustus that the secular games were exhibited.I say nothing of the calculations of the two princes, which I have sufficiently discussed in my history of the emperor Domitian; for he also exhibited secular games, at which indeed, being one of the priesthood of the Fifteen and praetor at the time, I specially assisted.It is in no boastful spirit that I mention this, but because this duty has immemorially belonged to the College of the Fifteen, and the praetors have performed the chief functions in these ceremonies.While Claudius sat to witness the games of the circus, some of the young nobility acted on horseback the battle of Troy.Among them was Britannicus, the emperor's son, and Lucius Domitius, who became soon afterwards by adoption heir to the empire with the surname of Nero.The stronger popular enthusiasm which greeted him was taken to presage his greatness.It was commonly reported that snakes had been seen by his cradle, which they seemed to guard, a fabulous tale invented to match the marvels of other lands.
Nero, never a disparager of himself, was wont to say that but one snake, at most, had been seen in his chamber.
Something however of popular favour was bequeathed to him from the remembrance of Germanicus, whose only male descendant he was, and the pity felt for his mother Agrippina was increased by the cruelty of Messalina, who, always her enemy, and then more furious than ever, was only kept from planning an accusation and suborning informers by a new and almost insane passion.She had grown so frantically enamoured of Caius Silius, the handsomest of the young nobility of Rome, that she drove from his bed Junia Silana, a high-born lady, and had her lover wholly to herself.Silius was not unconscious of his wickedness and his peril; but a refusal would have insured destruction, and he had some hope of escaping exposure; the prize too was great, so he consoled himself by awaiting the future and enjoying the present.As for her, careless of concealment, she went continually with a numerous retinue to his house, she haunted his steps, showered on him wealth and honours, and, at last, as though empire had passed to another, the slaves, the freedmen, the very furniture of the emperor were to be seen in the possession of the paramour.
Claudius meanwhile, who knew nothing about his wife, and was busy with his functions as censor, published edicts severely rebuking the lawlessness of the people in the theatre, when they insulted Caius Pomponius, an ex-consul, who furnished verses for the stage, and certain ladies of rank.He introduced too a law restraining the cruel greed of the usurers, and forbidding them to lend at interest sums repayable on a father's death.He also conveyed by an aqueduct into Rome the waters which flow from the hills of Simbrua.And he likewise invented and published for use some new letters, having discovered, as he said, that even the Greek alphabet had not been completed at once.