The Claudii were one of the five leading families (gentes maiores or "Greater Clans") which had dominated Roman social and political life from the earliest years of the republic.
His father's death left Appius head of his powerful family aged 20 or 21, but encumbered with two younger brothers, two unmarried sisters and little money.
This was only relative poverty, but it proves the integrity of his father, who obviously did not profit much, if at all, from the proscription period when less scrupulous characters, most notoriously Marcus Licinius Crassus and Gaius Curio pater, made enormous fortunes from the confiscated properties of Sulla's Marian victims.
Appius found generous help from Lucius Licinius Lucullus, who upon returning from his African propraetorship in 75 BC agreed to marry the youngest sister without a dowry.
But Varro was apparently so guilty that Hortensius resorted to dirty tricks which involved marking the ballots of the judges he had bribed, which caused a public scandal.
[citation needed] His predecessor Publius Cornelius Lentulus Spinther was a good and honest administrator, and his successor Cicero one of the best in Roman history.
[citation needed] On his way home Appius stopped at Athens once more, renewing his interest in the Eleusinian Mysteries and began preparations for restoring the gate of the Lesser Propylaea in Eleusis, a project later completed, according to the instructions in his testament, by his chief heirs Pulcher Claudius and Rex Marcius.
[citation needed] According to Paulus Orosius, Histories against Pagans VI (15.11): Appius Claudius censorinus, who by Pompeius' order was looking after Greece, wanted to test the trustworthiness of the Pythian Oracle, done away with by this time.
[citation needed] As an augur he engaged in heated debate with his senior colleague Gaius Claudius Marcellus (praetor 80 BC), who maintained that augury was established from a belief in divination but perpetuated through political expediency, while Appius strongly advocated an extreme traditionalist view upholding the authenticity of the craft and eventually published a noted Liber auguralis which included a good deal of polemic directed against "Marcelline" modernity.
Shackleton Bailey) It was also characteristic of him that he was fascinated by Athenian antiquities, but not what attracted many prominent Romans to Athens at the time: its fame as the greatest university city in the Greek-inhabited world (the oikoumene) where all the chief philosophical schools were based.
[citation needed] He was busy in Greece in 62–61 BC when his wild youngest brother Publius Clodius Pulcher got himself into trouble for violating the rites of the Bona Dea and was prosecuted for incestus, but it is not known in what capacity.
Most likely Claudia maior married Brutus c.59 (when he turned 26) while her minor sister's match with Magnus' son was probably arranged around the time of the Luca and Ravenna conferences (spring 56 BC), with the marriage taking place in Pompeius' second consulate after Appius returned from Sardinia.
It was an interesting choice of in-laws (adfines) since Brutus refused to speak to Pompeius Magnus until the Civil War, detesting him as a tyrant and the murderer of his father.