Lyon Tablet
The style and substance of the speech suggest that Claudius was willing to publish himself as a scholarly, pedantic, tolerant upholder of ancient senatorial rights and values, eager to extend the same privileges to worthy provincials.
In his Annals, the later historian Tacitus reports a different version of the speech,[3] probably based on various sources – including senatorial records – coupled with his own observations and the analysis of hindsight.
[4] His text broadly reaches the same conclusions but otherwise differs considerably from the version presented in the Lyon tablet, which includes many circumstantial details and may have been a verbatim transcript from an original Senate document.
In the same way, Ancus Marcius was succeeded by Tarquin the Elder who, because of the stain of his blood (his father was Demaratus of Corinth, and his mother a Tarquinian of noble race, it is true, but her poverty had forced her to submit to such a husband), found himself rejected in his homeland from the career of honours; after emigrating to Rome, he became its king.
Later, the morals of Tarquin and his sons having made them odious to everyone, the monarchical government bored the spirits, and the administration of the Republic passed to consuls, annual magistrates.″ ″Shall I now recall the dictatorship, superior in power to the consular dignity, and to which our ancestors had recourse in the difficult circumstances brought on by our civil disturbance or dangerous wars, or the plebeian tribunes, instituted to relax the interests of the people?
If I were to recount the wars waged by our ancestors, which made us what we are today, I would be afraid of appearing too arrogant and of taking vanity in the glory of our empire, which stretched as far as the ocean; but I would prefer to return to this city...″ ″Undoubtedly, by a new custom, the divine Augustus, my great-uncle, and Tiberius Caesar, my uncle, wanted all the flower of the coloniae and the municipium, in other words the best and richest men, to be admitted to this assembly.
May I be permitted to withhold as infamous the name of this thief whom I detest, of this prodigy in palestry, who brought the consulship into his house even before his colony had obtained the full right of Roman citizenship.
If, then, you agree with me that this is the case, what else is there left for you to wish for, other than I make you touch with your finger the soil itself, beyond the boundary of the province of Narbonne, sending you senators, while we have no reason to repent counting people from Lyon among the members of our order?
