completion of the Claudian aqueduct. It gives the emperor’s titles
as follows:
Tiberius Claudius, son of Drusus, Caesar Augustus German-
icus, Pontifex Maximus, holding the tribunician power for
the twelfth time, consul five times, acclaimed imperator
twenty-seven times, father of the fatherland.
(Smallwood 1967: no. 309)From this text we can surmise that Claudius’ twenty-seventh
acclamation as imperatoralso happened some time in the year
when he held the tribunician power for the twelfth time, that is
between 25 January 52 and 24 January 53. Moreover, we can date
this even more precisely. In his work On the Aqueducts of the
City of Rome, written in the late first century, Frontinus records
the completion of the Claudian aqueduct. His text has become
slightly corrupt in its transmission, but it can be confidently recon-
structed (Rodgers 2004: 73, 183–4). It gives the following
information about the date:
These works Claudius completed on the most magnificent
scale and dedicated in the consulship of [Faustus] Sulla and
[Salvius] Otho, in the eight hundred and third year since
the foundation of the city [i.e. Rome], on the Kalends of
August.
(Frontinus, On the Aqueducts of the City of Rome13.2)It has been noted that there is something awry with Frontinus’
dates: the eight hundred and third year since the foundation
of Rome ought to be 50 (Murphy-O’Connor 1992: 150–1).
Frontinus, however, clearly used a different calculation for the
foundation of Rome than that used by many other authors (a
system derived from the antiquarian writer Varro) and his dates
‘since the foundation of the city’ are routinely a year or two out
(Rodgers 2004: 139–40). More significant is his notice of the
consuls for the year: Faustus Sulla and Salvius Otho are known
from many other sources to have been consuls in 52 (Rodgers
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