ine language signifies strong and valiant.

II. It appears from record, that many of the Claudii have performed
signal services to the state, as well as committed acts of delinquency.
To mention the most remarkable only, Appius Caecus dissuaded the senate
from agreeing to an alliance with Pyrrhus, as prejudicial to the republic
[286]. Claudius Candex first passed the straits of Sicily with a fleet,
and drove the Carthaginians out of the island [287]. Claudius Nero cut
off Hasdrubal with a vast army upon his arrival in Italy from Spain,
before he could form a junction with his brother Hannibal [288]. On the
other hand, Claudius Appius Regillanus, one of the Decemvirs, made a
violent attempt to have a free virgin, of whom he was enamoured, adjudged
a slave; which caused the people to secede a second time from the senate
[289]. Claudius Drusus erected a statue of himself wearing a crown at
Appii Forum [290], and endeavoured, by means of his dependants, to make
himself master of Italy. Claudius Pulcher, when, off the coast of Sicily
[291], the pullets used for taking augury would not eat, in contempt of
the omen threw them overboard, as if they should drink at least, if they
would not eat; and then engaging the enemy, was routed. After his
defeat, when he (194) was ordered by the senate to name a dictator,
making a sort of jest of the public disaster, he named Glycias, his
apparitor.

The women of this family, likewise, exhibited characters equally opposed
to each other. For both the Claudias belonged to it; she, who, when the
ship freighted with things sacred to the Idaean Mother of the Gods [292],
stuck fast in the shallows of the Tiber, got it off, by praying to the
Goddess with a loud voice, "Follow me, if I am chaste;" and she also,
who, contrary to the usual practice in the case of women, was brought to
trial by the people for treason; because, when her litter was stopped by
a great crowd in the streets, she openly exclaimed, "I wish my brother
Pulcher was alive now, to lose another fleet, that Rome might be less
thronged." Besides, it is well known, that all the Claudii, except
Publius Claudius, who, to effect the banishment of Cicero, procured
himself to be adopted by a plebeian [293], and one younger than himself,
were always of the patrician party, as well as great sticklers for the
honour and power of that order; and so violent and obstinate in their
opposition to the plebeians, that not one of them, eve