Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

Before the Senate in a.d. 48, Claudius was well prepared. To the suspicions leveled against the Gauls’ loyalty he said: “If anyone concentrates on the fact that the Gauls resisted the divine Julius [Caesar] in war for ten years, he should consider that they have also been loyal and trustworthy for a hundred years, and had this loyalty tried to the utmost when we were in danger.” To the more general objections about non-Italians being classed as Roman, he directed his listeners to the examples of the ancient Greeks. “What was the ruin of Sparta and Athens but this, that mighty as they were in war, they spurned from them as aliens those whom they had conquered?” Either convinced or browbeaten by their impassioned emperor, the senators eventually agreed. From that point on, Gauls could not only attain Roman citizenship but also aspire to the highest political office in the empire.