Danube. During the reign of Gallienus, he was
called to Italy in order to crush Aureolus; and on the death of the
emperor (268) he was chosen as his successor, in accordance, it was
said, with his express desire. Shortly after his accession he routed the
Alamanni on the Lacus Benacus (some doubt is thrown upon this); in 269 a
great victory over the Goths at Naissus in Moesia gained him the title
of Gothicus. In the following year he died of the plague at Sirmium, in
his fifty-sixth year. He enjoyed great popularity, and appears to have
been a man of ability and character.

His life was written by Trebellius Pollio, one of the _Scriptores
Historiae Augusiae_; see also Zosimus i. 40-43, the histories of Th.
Bernhardt and H. Schiller, and special dissertations by A. Duncker on
the life of Claudius (1868) and the defeat of the Alamanni (_Annalen
des Vereins fuer nassauische Altertumskunde_, 1879); Homo, _De Claudio
Gothico_ (1900); Pauly-Wissowa, _Realencyclopaedie_, ii. 2458 ff.
(Henze).

CLAUDIUS, MATTHIAS (1740-1815), German poet, otherwise known by the _nom
de plume_ of ASMUS, was born on the 15th of August 1740 at Reinfeld,
near Luebeck, and studied at Jena. He spent the greater part of his life
in the little town of Wandsbeck, near Hamburg, where he earned his first
literary reputation by editing from 1771 to 1775, a newspaper called the
_Wandsbecker Bote_ (_Wandsbeck Messenger_), in which he published a
large number of prose essays and poems. They were written in pure and
simple German, and appealed to the popular taste; in many there was a
vein of extravagant humour or even burlesque, while others were full of
quiet meditation and solemn sentiment. In his later days, perhaps
through the influence of Klopstock, with whom he had formed an intimate
acquaintance, Claudius became strongly pietistic, and the graver side of
his nature showed itself. In 1814 he removed to Hamburg, to the house of
his son-in-law, the publisher Friedrich Christoph Perthes, where he died
on the 21st of January 1815.

Claudius's collected works were published under the title of _Asmus
omnia sua secum portans, oder Saemtliche Werke des Wandsbecker Boten_
(8 vols., 1775-1812; 13th edition, by C. Redich, 2 vols., 1902). His
biography has been written by Wilhelm Herbst (4th ed., 1878). See also
M. Schneidereit, _M. Claudius, seine Weltanschauung und
Lebensweisheit_ (1898).

CLAUSEL (more correctly CLAUZEL),