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THE ROMAN EMPERORS IN MARBLE. 69
good man which he thought he had found here, should
be mated with helpless weakness ; and by his will, he
tried to assure Claudius an independent and easy pecu-
niary position. But Caligula robbed him of his means,
and Claudius afterwards lived the life of the poor scholar,
with all its privations. Unhappy, however, he was not
except during the hours he was summoned to court, to
serve as target for the witty sallies of Caligula. He had
his consolation in reading and authorship, and his rest in
the empty dreams to which he gave himself up, after at
the nearest inn he had sated his appetite, always enor-
mous, and his love for the Alban wine. When he was
not in the country, he dwelt in a modest house in one of
Rome’s suburbs, liked by his neighbors, who seemed to
wish to make amends, by respectful treatment, for the
contumely he had to bear from his kindred. Greek liter-
ature, he had thoroughly searched ; his historical studies
were careful and extensive ;
his work as author was great
in compass, and to judge from contemporary expressions
of opinion, worthy of notice for that which it contained.
In Roman history, he wrote twenty-three volumes ; of
Etrurian researches, he wrote twenty books ; of Cartha-
ginian, eight. Besides these, he was author of a " De-
fence of Cicero " against his adversary Asinius Gallus, of
a work on the game of backgammon, another on Latin
orthography, and finally, copious records of his own life.
That his Etrurian and Carthaginian annals have been
lost, must be accounted an irreparable damage to sci-
ence ; for we would have undoubtedly found in them
enormous erudition, and a wealth of conscientious ac-
counts of facts, drawn from sources now long since dry.
Claudius had the entire nature of a professional man of
our day, who loves to bury himself in the smallest details
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