History of the Roman Empire weather. Claudius ordered the suspension of further attacks across the Rhine, setting what was to become the permanent limit of the Empire's expansion in that direction. In 43, he resumed the Roman conquest of Britannia that Julius Caesar had begun in the 50s BC, and incorporated more Eastern provinces into the empire. In his own family life, Claudius was less successful. His wife Messalina cuckolded him; when he found out, he had her executed and married his niece, Agrippina the Younger. She, along with several of his freedmen, held an inordinate amount of power over him, and although there are
Agrippina the Elder Agrippina the Elder merely standing on a bridge waving the soldiers passing by, whereas her daughter eclipses her by presiding over a military tribunal and accepting gifts from foreign ambassadors. Tacitus also records serious tension between Agrippina and Livia. He describes Livia as having visited "stepmotherly provocations" on Agrippina. He says of Agrippina: "were it not that through her moral integrity and love for her husband she converted an otherwise ungovernable temper to the good" (Tacitus, "Annals" 1.33). Despite being sympathetic to her as a victim of imperial oppression, he uses expressions like "excitable", "arrogant", "proud", "fierce", "obstinate", and "ambitious"