Why did Claudius & Gertrude ask Hamlets long time friends Rosencrantz & Guildenstern to come?

Claudius died on 13 October AD 54. Roman opinion was convinced that Agrippina had poisoned him.

Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, the ‘I Claudius’ of Robert Graves’s splendid historical novels, was one of the few historians who has ever exercised real power. As a young man, ignored and left to his own devices by his family, but encouraged by Livy, who spotted his talent, he wrote histories of Etruria and Carthage, began a history of Rome and wrote a historical treatise on the Roman alphabet. All his works are lost, unfortunately. His family kept him out of sight as far as they could because he was so uncouth and unattractive. Constantly ill and irritatingly clumsy, he had a bad stammer and a permanently runny nose, his head twitched and he dribbled. One theory is that he suffered from cerebral palsy.

Claudius was sufficiently a figure of fun to survive the murderous reign of his nephew Caligula. Found hiding behind curtains in the palace, shaking with fright, when Caligula was murdered in AD 41, he was made emperor by the Praetorian Guard. The Senate, which had meanwhile been discussing the restoration of the republic, was forced resentfully to acquiesce. It was Claudius who annexed Britain to the Empire and in 43 he crossed the Channel himself to see his legionaries take Camulodunum (Colchester). The inscription on his triumphal arch in Rome said that he ‘brought barbarian peoples beyond Ocean for the first time under Rome’s sway.’

In 48 Claudius’s young and promiscuous third wife, Valeria Messalina, attempted a coup against him with her latest lover, Gaius Silius. The coup failed, Messalina killed herself and Silius was executed. Claudius told the Praetorian Guard to knock him on the head if he ever married again, but within a few months he took as his fourth wife another unscrupulous and seductive beauty much younger than himself, his niece Agrippina, a sister of Caligula. She was 33 to Claudius’s 58 and she had a 12-year-old son by a former marriage, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, better known as Nero. The Senate had to pass a special decree to authorise what would otherwise have been an illegal incestuous union. The ambitious and power-hungry Agrippina was determined that Nero should be Claudius’s successor, rather than the Emperor’s own son by Messalina, the nine-year-old Britannicus. Nero was accordingly adopted by Claudius as his son and promised the hand of the Emperor’s daughter Octavia, whose current betrothed was publicly accused of incest with his attractive sister, and committed suicide. Tacitus records Claudius once saying when the worse for drink that he seemed destined to bear the misbehaviour of his wives and then punish it.

On 12 October AD 54, the 64-year old emperor presided over a banquet on the Capitol, with his taster, the eunuch Halotus, in attendance. He ate his final meal in his palace the following day. The official story was that he was stricken while watching a performance by some actors. Roman opinion, however, was convinced that Agrippina had poisoned him, either because she would not wait any longer for Nero, now seventeen, to succeed while she could still control him or because she feared that Claudius was about to reinstate Britannicus as his heir. According to Tacitus, Agrippina got Halotus to feed Claudius a poisoned mushroom and when that did not work, Claudius’s doctor put a poisoned feather down his throat, ostensibly to make him vomit. Another account, reported by Suetonius, had a dish of poisoned mushrooms given by Agrippina herself and said the second attempt involved poisoned gruel or a poisoned enema. It was a lingering, painful death.

Agrippina apparently delayed announcing the death for a while, to wait for an astrologically favourable moment and until word had been sent to the Praetorian Guard. When the moment came, Nero was escorted to the Praetorian barracks where he was hailed as Imperator. The Senate quickly followed suit and when Nero delivered the expected eulogy of the dead Emperor, the senators sniggered. The Senate also decreed the deification of Claudius, which was needed to bolster Nero’s position as ‘Son of the Deified’. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, who had overseen Nero’s education, wrote a mocking account of ‘The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius’. It describes the late Emperor presenting himself at the gates of Olympus, where the gods contemptuously reject him and pack him off to Hades.

Britannicus died in 55. Nero allegedly had him poisoned and in 59 he sent a trusted officer to kill Agrippina. It was said that she asked the officer to finish her by thrusting his sword into her womb, the womb that had borne Nero.

When Paul arrives in Corinth he meets Aquila and Priscilla, Jews who had been expelled from Rome by Claudius. In A.D. 49, the emperor Claudius expelled all Jews from Rome because of continued “rioting over Chrestus,” likely a Latinized christos, or messiah in Hebrew. The most likely explanation is that Jews who had been under that Apostolic teaching in Jerusalem had returned to Rome and brought the message of Jesus as Messiah to the synagogues of Rome (Suetonius Life of Claudius, 25.4; cited from Pervo, Acts, 446).

[Claudius] “expelled Jews from Rome because they were generating incessant unrest through the instigation of Chrestus

Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultantis Roma expulit.

Almost every detail of this expulsion can be disputed. First, with respect to the date of the decree, Dio Cassius (60.6.6) says in A.D. 41 Claudius put restrictions on Jews meeting together. The same year a delegation (which included the well-known Jewish philosopher Philo) petitioned the emperor on behalf of the Jews of Alexandria.

Jews living in Rome had come into conflict with the government before. In 139 B.C. they were expelled for “corrupting Roman morals” (Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia, 1.3.3) and again in A.D. 19 because they were “flocking to Rome” and converting many (Dio Cassius 57.18.5). This makes the expulsion in A.D. 49 plausible, although what Suetonius meant by Chrestus is not at all clear.

The second problem is the name (or title) Chrestus. The common view is that Suetonius has misunderstood the Greek term Christos, thinking there was a person with this name who was stirring up these riots. Occasionally a writer will suggest that there was another messianic figure active in Rome with the name Chrestus, but this seems unlikely (Keener, Acts, 3:2709). As Keener shows, the use of Chrestian (rather than Christian) does appear “often” for the earliest followers of Jesus (3:2710).

Third, it is virtually impossible he would have expelled all Jews from Rome. Although many commentaries will point this out as an historical inaccuracy, it is quite typical of Luke’s literary style to use “all” where a modern writer might use “many” or “a great number.” For example, 13:44 “almost the whole city” turns out to hear Paul preach in the synagogue at Psidian Antioch.

Exile was normally a punishment for individuals (Keener, Acts, 3:2699). Keener also suggests the expulsion is plausible since Claudius revived some of the older forms of Roman religion. The Jews were always under suspicion because they practiced a superstitious eastern cult. Rome also banished astrologers from Italy in A.D. 52 (Tacitus, Annals, 12.52.3). At best, the ringleaders responsible for the unrest would be forced to leave the city of Rome.

What is important is Aquila and Priscilla were ordered to leave Rome as Jews, but they are Jewish Christians. From Rome’s perspective there is not much difference between Jews and Christians, they really the same thing.

Early followers of Jesus like Aquila and Priscilla may have heard the gospels as early as Pentecost. If they returned to Rome and argued in the synagogue that Jesus was the Christ, it is entirely possible the reaction was similar to the reaction against Paul several times in Acts. As with Stephen and Paul, the preaching of Jesus as the messiah in the synagogue met with some success, but often as not there was a zealous and violent response. While this is a speculation, it would seem reasonable that preaching Jesus as Messiah in a Roman synagogue would result in a similar reaction.