Claudius’ wife Messalina had soon borne him…
42 CE
Claudius’ wife Messalina had soon borne him two children: Octavia, born in 30 or 40, and Tiberius Claudius Germanicus, born in 41; sharing his father's praenomen as recognition of his status as heir, he will be granted the honorific Britannnicus in 43.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, called Seneca the Younger (because his father, Seneca the Elder, who died in CE 37, was—as his son will one day be—a noted literary figure and rhetorician) was born in Corduba (modern-day Córdoba) in Hispania and had gone as a boy to Rome, where he was trained in rhetoric and was introduced to Hellenistic Stoic philosophy by Attalus and Sotion.
His older brother, Gallio, becomes proconsul in the new Roman province of Achaea.
The son of his younger brother Annaeus Mela is Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, better known in English as Lucan.
Seneca's own writings describe his poor health.
At some stage he was nursed by his aunt; as she was in Egypt from 16 to 31 CE, he must have at least visited and perhaps lived there for a period.
He and his aunt returned to Rome in 31, and she had helped him in his campaign for his first magistracy.
There was a severe conflict between Caligula and Seneca; the emperor is said to have spared his life only because he expected Seneca's natural life to be near its end.
Claudius, at the behest of his third wife Valeria Messalina, banishes Seneca to Corsica on a charge of adultery with Caligula's sister Julia Livilla.
Because he had been proclaimed Emperor on the initiative of the Praetorian Guard instead of the Senate— the first Emperor thus proclaimed — Claudius' repute suffers at the hands of commentators (such as Seneca).
Moreover, he is the first Emperor who resorts to bribery as a means to secure army loyalty.
Tiberius and Augustus had both left gifts to the army and guard in their wills, and upon Caligula's death the same would have been expected, even if no will existed.
Claudius remains grateful to the guard, however, issuing coins with tributes to the Praetorians in the early part of his reign.
Claudius’ discovery of an actual plot against his life sends him into semiretirement in 42; he invests Messalina with much of the responsibilities of imperial governance.
Following her elevation to the unofficial role of coemperor, Messalina embarks on a career of wild promiscuity, manipulating her husband into executing several men who scorn her advances or otherwise incur her wrath.
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