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66 ROMAN DA YS.
city were laid bare, and among them statues were found
of emperor Claudius and his second wife, Agrippina.
Where a statue of Claudius has come to light, there has
the old emperor lived, in the record of some useful
enterprise. Thus is it here, also. Fucinus had no ap-
parent outlet, and often overflowed the region round
about. Julius Caesar intended, therefore, to fix the wa-
ter-level by a tunnel through that which now is called
Monte Salviano. But here, too, it was allotted Claudius
to take up and carry out Caesar’s idea. For eleven years,
thirty thousand men were busied breaking through the
rock. In the year 25 after Christ, the work was com-
pleted. That, like so much else, fell into decay, during
the middle ages. More than a thousand years after
Claudius, the matter was taken up afresh, and a new
tunnel has now given agriculture fruitful lands around
Lake Celano, in safe possession. In the year 1875, Italy
celebrated this great work, by stamping a medal in honor
of its author, prince Alessandro Torlonia.
Claudius, as child and youth, was sickly. His powers
of body and mind developed so slowly, that after he had
come to years of discretion, he was still under charge of
a tutor. At home, he was heartlessly treated, even by
his mother. She was heard to complain that she had
brought a half-witted creature into the world ; and when
she wished to distinguish any one as uncommonly dull,
her unvarying phrase was :
" He is sillier than my son
Claudius." The beauty and genius with which his
brother Germanicus shone, made by comparison his
position worse. The only one of his relations who
showed him kindness, was emperor Augustus. From
letters Augustus wrote to Livia (and of which Suetonius
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