According to the historian Livy, he delivered a speech to the senate in 368 BC unsuccessfully opposing the proposal to open the executive office of consul to plebeians.
In 362, after the plebeian consul of that year had been killed in battle, Claudius was nominated dictator and campaigned against the Hernici, obtaining some successes but with heavy losses of his own.
Oakley rejects the historicity of Claudius's speech in 368 BC, asserting that neither Livy nor his sources would have had any authentic evidence of it, and he also notes that the Claudian family's opposition to the rights of plebeians is a recurring stereotype in Roman tradition.
[2] Oakley also found Claudius's dictatorship in 362 dubious,[3] but Ferenczy accepted both the office and the campaign against the Hernici as historical.
Wiseman[6] finds such a career length unlikely, and Münzer suggested that the literary tradition has confused two different two Appii Claudii.