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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
The Pavian inscription (C.I.L. v. 6416), which is usually interpreted as indicating Augustus' last settlement of the succession, contains the name of Claudius besides those of the Julian line. Mommsen (Ber. d. säcks. Gesellsch. 1850, pp. 315 ff.) takes this fact as indicating that Claudius, though not adopted into the Julian line, was still in some way considered a member of the imperial household. I think that there is good ground for suspecting the part relating to Claudius as probably added by him at a later day, and that all arguments regarding his early life which are based upon its presence on the arch should submit to a resifting.
page 90 note 1 Because of the order of the priesthoods (auguri, sodali Aug., sodali Titio) found in C.I.L. v. 24, a titulus of Claudius, it is usually affirmed that the Titian priesthood was conferred upon Claudius after the others. However, there is no good reason for assuming that the order is chronological. It is the regular order, as in C.I.L. iii. 2974 and 2975. It seems very likely that Augustus in restoring the ancient Sabine worship would have made the members of the Claudian family (Tiberius, Drusus, Germanicus, and Claudius) its priests, since the antiquarians were then busy tracing the Claudian line back to that tribe. If this is the case we can well understand why these very same men should have been made the first honorary priests of the Augustales: the latter worship was deliberately shaped after the former, or, perhaps we may go a step further and say that Augustus, in rehabilitating the worship connected with the name of the Sabine king, was simply giving a mild hint that the growing practice of erecting shrines to the present ruler had good Roman precedence, and might well be incorporated in a regular custom. This interpretation may be gathered from Tac. Ann. i. 54: ‘Idem annus nouas caerimonias accepit addito sodalium Augustalium sacerdotio, ut quondam T. Tatius retinendis Sabinorum sacris sodales Titios instituerat.’ See also Hist. ii. 95. My point is then that Claudius was probably made a Sodalis Titius as a member of the Claudian gens, and later when the Augustan sodality was formed on the model of the Titian he was elected to the new priest hood together with the other honorary members of the parent institution. His election to these priesthoods is probably due to his position in the Claudian family, not to any supposed standing with the Julian line.
page 91 note 1 Ruggiero's citations need verifying. Read 6416 for 6417, and 4334 for 4344.
page 91 note 2 The name of the later emperor Nero does not help us here, as we do not know whether he received that name at birth as a grandson of Germanicus or at adoption.
page 92 note 1 It seems impossible to decide whether the tituli were inscribed upon the arch or upon the bases of the appropriate statues which probably stood on the arch. If the second assumption is true, the later addition of Claudius’ statue at one end may account for the crowding of the statues that mislead the anonymous Einsiedler into confusing the tituli as he did, reading the last four as one : cf. C.I.L. vi. p. xv.