[-17-] When Claudius now became consul again,—­it was the third time,—­he put an end to many sacrifices and many feast days.  For, as the greater part of the year was given up to them, no small damage was done to public business.  Beside curtailing the number of these he retrenched in all the other ways that he could.  What had been given away by Gaius without any justice or reason he demanded back from the recipients; but he gave back to the road commissioners all that his predecessor had exacted in fines on account of Corbulo.  Moreover, he gave notice to magistrates chosen by lot, since they were even now slow about leaving the City, that they must commence their journey before the middle of April came.  He reduced to servitude the Lycians, who rising in revolt had slain some Romans, and merged them in the prefecture of Pamphylia.  During the investigation, which was conducted in the senate-house, he put a question in the Latin tongue to one of the envoys who had originally been a Lycian but had been made a Roman.  As the man did not understand what was said, he took away his citizenship, saying that it was not proper for a person to be a Roman who had no knowledge of Roman speech.  A great many other persons unworthy of citizenship were excluded from its privileges, whereas he granted it to some quite without restrictions, either individuals or large bodies of men.  And inasmuch as practically everywhere Romans were esteemed above foreigners, many sought the franchise by personal application to the emperor and many bought it from Messalina and the Caesarians.  For this reason, though the right was at first bartered only for great sums, it later was so cheapened by the facility with which it could be obtained that it came to be said that if a person only gave a man some broken glassware he might become a citizen.

This behavior, then, subjected the emperor to no end of jests, but he received praise for such actions as the following.  Many persons were all the time becoming objects of blackmail, some because they did not use Claudius’s proper title and others because they were going to leave him nothing when they died,—­the blackmailers asserting that it was necessary for those who obtained citizenship from him to do both of these things.  The emperor now stepped in and forbade that any one should be called to account for such negligence.—­Now Messalina and his freedmen kept offering for sale and peddling out not merely the franchise, and military posts, and positions as procurator, and governmental offices, but everything in general to such an extent that all necessaries grew scarce[7]; and Claudius was forced to muster the populace on the Campus Martius and there from a platform to ordain what the prices of wares should be.

Claudius himself wearing a chlamys gave a contest of armed men at the camp.  His son’s birthday was observed voluntarily by the praetors with a kind of spectacle that they produced and with dinners.  This was once afterward repeated, too,—­at least by all of them that chose.