title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Louisville is home to a fast-growing independent theatre scene. Theatre 502, Savage Rose Classical Theatre, The Bard's Town Theatre Company, The Liminal Playhouse, Looking For Lilith, Bunbury Theatre Company, Louisville Repertory Theatre, Louisville Improvisors, Pandora Productions, Eve Theatre Company, Squallis Puppeteers and Baby Horse Theatre all curate full seasons of contemporary, classical and experimental work.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: The Louisville Palace, the official venue for the Louisville Orchestra, is an ornate theatre in downtown Louisville's so-called theatre district. In addition to orchestra performances, the theatre shows films and hosts concerts.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Iroquois Park is the home of the renovated Iroquois Amphitheater, which hosts a variety of musical concerts in a partially covered outdoor setting.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: College sports are popular in the Louisville area. The Louisville Cardinals have competed as members of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), since joining that league in July 2014.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: College basketball is particularly popular. The Louisville Cardinals's Freedom Hall averaged sellouts for 10 straight years and the Downtown KFC Yum! Center following suit with regular sellouts. The Cardinals ranked third nationally in attendance in 2012–13, the most recent of the program's three* national championship seasons (1980, 1986, 2013*). The Cardinals also hold the Big East conference women's basketball paid attendance record with nearly 17,000 attending the game against the Kentucky Wildcats in 2008.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: The Louisville market has ranked first in ratings for the NCAA men's basketball tournament every year since 1999. The Kentucky Wildcats used to play an annual game in Freedom Hall.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: The Louisville Cardinals football team has produced successful NFL players such as Lamar Jackson, Johnny Unitas, Deion Branch, Sam Madison, David Akers, Joe Jacoby, DeVante Parker and Ray Buchanan. The Cardinals won the 1991 Fiesta Bowl, the 2007 Orange Bowl, and the 2013 Sugar Bowl. In 2016, sophomore quarterback Lamar Jackson took the football team to new heights. Lamar was the school's first Heisman Trophy winner, which is awarded to the most outstanding college football player nationwide during that season. He was also one of the youngest players to ever receive the award. The team also matched their highest ranking in school history at No. 3. The University of Louisville baseball team advanced to the College World Series in Omaha in 2007, 2013, 2014, 2017 and 2019 as one of the final eight teams to compete for the national championship.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Horse racing is also a major attraction. Churchill Downs is home to the Kentucky Derby, the largest sporting event in the state, as well as the Kentucky Oaks which together cap the two-week-long Kentucky Derby Festival. Churchill Downs has also hosted the renowned Breeders' Cup on eight occasions, most recently in 2011.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Louisville is also the home of Valhalla Golf Club which hosted the 1996, 2000 and 2014 PGA Championships, the 2004 Senior PGA Championship and the 2008 Ryder Cup. It is also home to David Armstrong Extreme Park (formerly Louisville Extreme Park), which skateboarder Tony Hawk has called one of his top five skate parks.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Louisville has seven professional and semi-professional sports teams, The Louisville Bats are a baseball team playing in the International League as the Triple-A affiliate of the nearby Cincinnati Reds. The team plays at Louisville Slugger Field at the edge of the city's downtown. Louisville City FC, a professional soccer team in the second-division USL Championship, began play in 2015 at Slugger Field and has moved into their own stadium, Lynn Family Stadium, in 2020. The team was originally the reserve side for Orlando City SC of Major League Soccer, but the two organizations were separated in 2016. Racing Louisville FC, an expansion team in the National Women's Soccer League began play in 2021 at Lynn Family Stadium.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Louisville had two professional American football teams in the National Football League: the Louisville Breckenridges (or Brecks for short) from 1921 to 1924 and the Louisville Colonels in 1926.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Between 1967 and 1976, Louisville was home to the Kentucky Colonels of the American Basketball Association. The Colonels was one of the ABA's most successful teams during its existence, winning four division titles and the 1975 ABA Championship, but was not invited to join the NBA when the two leagues merged in 1976, and subsequently folded.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Louisville has the added distinction of being the only city in the world that is the birthplace of four heavyweight boxing champions: Marvin Hart, Muhammad Ali, Jimmy Ellis and Greg Page.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Louisville Metro has 122 city parks covering more than . Several of these parks were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed New York City's Central Park as well as parks, parkways, college campuses and public facilities in many U.S. locations. The Louisville Waterfront Park is prominently located on the banks of the Ohio River near downtown and features large open areas, which often hold free concerts and other festivals. The Big Four Bridge, a former railroad bridge spanning but is now a pedestrian bridge connecting Waterfront Park with Jeffersonville, Indiana's waterfront park, fully opened in May 2014 with the completion of Jeffersonville's ramp. Cherokee Park, one of the most visited parks in the nation, features a mixed-use loop and many well-known landscaping and architectural features including the Hogan's Fountain Pavilion. Other notable parks in the system include Iroquois Park, Shawnee Park, Seneca Park and Central Park.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Further from the downtown area is the Jefferson Memorial Forest, which at is the largest municipal urban forest in the United States., The forest is designated as a National Audubon Society wildlife refuge and offers over of various hiking trails.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Otter Creek Outdoor Recreation Area, owned and operated by the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, is another large park in nearby Brandenburg, Kentucky. The park's namesake, Otter Creek, winds along the eastern side of the park. A scenic bend in the Ohio River, which divides Kentucky from Indiana, can be seen from northern overlooks within the park. The park is a mountain biking destination, with trails maintained by a local mountain bike organization.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Other outdoor points of interest in the Louisville area include Cave Hill Cemetery (the burial location of Col. Harland Sanders), Zachary Taylor National Cemetery (the burial location of President Zachary Taylor), the Louisville Zoo and the Falls of the Ohio National Wildlife Conservation Area.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: In development is the City of Parks, a project to create a continuous paved pedestrian and biking trail called the Louisville Loop around Louisville Metro while also adding a large amount of park land. Current plans call for making approximately of the Floyds Fork flood plain in eastern Jefferson County into a new park system called The Parklands of Floyds Fork, expanding area in the Jefferson Memorial Forest, and adding riverfront land and wharfs along the Riverwalk and the Levee Trail, both completed segments of the Louisville Loop.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Until 2015, Louisville was one of two cities in Kentucky designated by the state as first-class (along with Lexington, the state's second-largest). Since January 6, 2003, Louisville has merged its government with that of Jefferson County, forming coterminous borders. Louisville was the second and only other city in the state to merge with its county. (Lexington had merged with Fayette County in 1974.)


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Louisville Metro is governed by an executive called the Metro Mayor and a city legislature called the Metro Council. The second and current Metro Mayor is Greg Fischer (D), who entered office on January 3, 2011. Craig Greenberg is the mayor-elect.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: The Metro Council consists of 26 seats representing districts apportioned by population throughout the city and county. The residents of the semi-independent municipalities within Louisville Metro are apportioned to districts along with all other county residents. Half (13) of the seats come up for reelection every two years. The council is chaired by a Council President, currently David Yates (D), who is elected by the council members annually. Democrats currently have a 17-to-9 majority.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Before merger, under the Kentucky Constitution and statutory law Louisville was designated as a first-class city in regard to local laws affecting public safety, alcohol beverage control, revenue options, and various other matters; as of 2014, it is the only such designated city in the state.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: The Official Seal of the City of Louisville, no longer used following the merger, reflected its history and heritage in the fleur-de-lis representing French aid given during the Revolutionary War and the thirteen stars signifying the original colonies. The new Seal of Louisville Metro retains the fleur-de-lis, but has only two stars, one representing the city and the other the county.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Kentucky's 3rd congressional district encompasses most of Louisville Metro, and is represented by Rep. John Yarmuth (D). Far eastern portions of the county are part of the 4th congressional district, which is represented by Thomas Massie (R).


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: In a 2005 survey, Morgan Quitno Press ranked Louisville as the seventh safest large city in the United States. The 2006 edition of the survey ranked Louisville eighth.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: In 2004, Louisville recorded 70 murders. The numbers for 2005 ranged from 55 to 59 (FBI says 55, LMPD says 59), which was down 16 percent from 2004. In 2006, Louisville-Jefferson County recorded 50 murders, which was significantly lower than previous years. In 2008, Louisville recorded 79 murders.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: The Louisville Metro Area's overall violent crime rate was 412.6 per 100,000 residents in 2005. The Elizabethtown, Kentucky Metro Area, which is part of Louisville's Combined Statistical Area, was the 17th safest Metro in the U.S. Kentucky has the 5th lowest violent crime rate out of the 50 states.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: In 2020, Louisville recorded 173 murders; and, in 2021, Louisville recorded 188 murders amidst an ongoing violent crime wave in the city.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: The city has also been one of the hardest hit by the opioid epidemic. In 2021, Louisville broke the record for overdoses in the city. Heroin, fentanyl and other opioids have also attributed to an overall increase in violent crime, property crime and homelessness in the past decade.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Violent crime is most concentrated west of downtown, especially in the Russell neighborhood. The West End, located north of Algonquin Parkway and West of 9th Street, had 32 of the city's 79 murders in 2007.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: The primary law enforcement agencies are the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) and the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office (JCSO). "911" emergency medical services are provided by the government as Louisville Metro EMS (LMEMS) which responds to over 120,000 calls for service annually. Louisville Metro Department of Corrections operates two facilities housing approximately 2,000 inmates.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Louisville has recently been featured on the television show "First 48". The show follows LMPD's homicide unit while they try to solve murders.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Fire protection is provided by 16 independent fire departments working in concert through mutual aid agreements. The only fire department operated by Metro Government is Louisville Fire & Rescue, the successor to the pre-merger Louisville Division of Fire. The city of Shively in western Jefferson County possesses an independent fire department that uses the same dispatch and radio channels as Louisville Fire and Rescue. The other 14 fire departments in Louisville-Jefferson County are run by independent taxing districts, collectively referred to as the Jefferson County Fire Service (JCFS); the county fire service coordinates dispatch, training, and standardization for its member departments.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Louisville is home to several institutions of higher learning. There are six four-year universities, the University of Louisville, Bellarmine University, Boyce College, Spalding University, Sullivan University and Simmons College of Kentucky; Louisville Bible College; a two-year community college, Jefferson Community and Technical College; and several other business or technical schools such as Spencerian College, Strayer University and Sullivan College of Technology and Design. Indiana University Southeast is located across the Ohio River in New Albany, Indiana.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: The University of Louisville has had notable achievements including several hand transplants and the world's first self-contained artificial heart transplant.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Two major graduate-professional schools of religion are also located in Louisville. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, with more than 5,300 students, is the flagship institution of the Southern Baptist Convention. It was founded in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1859 and moved to Louisville in 1877, occupying its present campus on Lexington Road in 1926. Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, product of a 1901 merger of two predecessor schools founded at Danville, Kentucky in 1853 and in Louisville in 1893, occupied its present campus on Alta Vista Road in 1963.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: According to the U.S. Census, of Louisville's population over 25, 21.3% (the national average is 24%) hold a bachelor's degree or higher and 76.1% (80% nationally) have a high school diploma or equivalent.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: The public school system, Jefferson County Public Schools, consists of more than 100,000 students in 173 schools. Dupont Manual High School ranks 30th in the nation overall for best high schools, and 13th in best magnet high schools. Due to Louisville's large Catholic population, there are 27 Catholic schools in the city. The Kentucky School for the Blind, for all of Kentucky's blind and visually impaired students, is located on Frankfort Avenue in the Clifton neighborhood.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Louisville's newspaper of record is "The Courier-Journal". The alternative paper is the progressive alt-weekly "Louisville Eccentric Observer" (commonly called 'LEO'), which was founded by 3rd district U.S. Representative John Yarmuth (D).


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: WAVE 3, an NBC affiliate, was Kentucky's first TV station. Another prominent TV station is ABC affiliate WHAS 11, formerly owned by the (who also owned "The Courier-Journal"), which hosts the regionally notable annual fundraiser, the WHAS Crusade for Children. CBS affiliate WLKY 32 and Fox affiliate WDRB 41 (along with its dual The CW/MyNetworkTV affiliated sister station WBKI 58) round out the major television stations in the city.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: The most popular radio stations are WGZB-FM and 84 WHAS 840 AM. The latter was designated by the FCC as a clear-channel station, and was formerly owned by the Binghams (now iHeartMedia), and is a talk radio station that also broadcasts regional sports.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: As with most American cities, transportation in Louisville is based primarily on automobiles. However, the city traces its foundation to the era where the river was the primary means of transportation, and railroads have been an important part of local industry for over a century. In more recent times, Louisville has become an international hub for air cargo.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Louisville has inner and outer interstate beltways, I264 and I265 respectively. Interstates I64 and I65 pass through Louisville, and I-71 has its southern terminus in Louisville. Since all three of these highways intersect at virtually the same location on the east side of downtown, this spot has become known as "Spaghetti Junction". Three bridges carry I64 and I65 over the Ohio River, and a fourth automobile bridge carries non-interstate traffic, including bicyclists and pedestrians. Immediately east of downtown is the Big Four Bridge, a former railroad bridge that has been renovated into as a pedestrian bridge.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: The Ohio River Bridges Project, a plan under consideration for decades to construct two new interstate bridges over the Ohio River to connect Louisville to Indiana, including a reconfiguration of Spaghetti Junction, began construction in 2012. One bridge, the Abraham Lincoln Bridge, is located downtown beside the existing Kennedy Bridge for relief of I65 traffic. The other, named the Lewis and Clark Bridge, connects I265 between the portions located in southeast Clark County, Indiana and northeast Jefferson County, Kentucky (Louisville Metro). Both bridges and corresponding construction were finished in 2016. As with any major project, there have been detractors and possible alternatives; one grassroots organization, 8664.org, has proposed options for downtown revitalization improvements, and a simpler and less expensive roadway design.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Louisville's main airport is the centrally located Louisville International Airport, whose IATA Airport code (SDF) reflects its former name of Standiford Field. The airport is also home to UPS's Worldport global air hub. UPS operates its largest package-handling hub at Louisville International Airport and bases its UPS Airlines division there. Over 4.2 million passengers and over 4.7 billion pounds (2,350,000 t) of cargo pass through the airport each year. It is also the second busiest airport in the United States in terms of cargo traffic, and fourth busiest for such in the world. Only about 35 minutes from Fort Knox, the airport is also a major hub for armed services personnel. The historic but smaller Bowman Field is used mainly for general aviation while nearby Clark Regional Airport is used mostly by private jets.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: The McAlpine Locks and Dam is located on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, near the downtown area. The locks were constructed to allow shipping past the Falls of the Ohio. In 2001 over 55 million tons of commodities passed through the locks.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Public transportation consists mainly of buses run by the Transit Authority of River City (TARC). The city buses serve all parts of downtown Louisville and Jefferson County, as well as Kentucky suburbs in Oldham County, Bullitt County, and the Indiana suburbs of Jeffersonville, Clarksville and New Albany. In addition to regular city buses, transit throughout the downtown hotel and shopping districts is served by a fleet of zero-emissions buses called LouLift. In late 2014, these vehicles replaced the series of motorized trolleys known as the "Toonerville II Trolley". A light rail system has been studied and proposed for the city, but no plan was in development as of 2007.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Louisville has historically been a major center for railway traffic. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad was once headquartered here, before it was purchased by CSX Transportation. Today the city is served by two major freight railroads, CSX (with a major classification yard in the southern part of the metro area) and Norfolk Southern. Five major main lines connect Louisville to the rest of the region. Two regional railroads, the Paducah and Louisville Railway and the Louisville and Indiana Railroad, also serve the city. With the discontinuance of the stop in Louisville in 2003 for a more northerly route between New York and Chicago, the "Kentucky Cardinal" no longer serves the city; it is thus the fifth largest city in the country with no passenger rail service.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: In 2016 Walk Score ranked Louisville 43rd "most walkable" of 141 U.S. cities with a population greater than 200,000.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Water is provided by the Louisville Water Company, which provides water to more than 800,000 residents in Louisville as well as parts of Oldham and Bullitt counties. Additionally, they provide wholesale water to the outlying counties of Shelby, Spencer and Nelson.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: The Ohio River provides for most of the city's source of drinking water. Water is drawn from the river at two points: the raw water pump station at Zorn Avenue and River Road, and the B.E. Payne Pump Station northeast of Harrods Creek. Water is also obtained from a riverbank infiltration well at the Payne Plant. There are also two water treatment plants serving the Louisville Metro area: The Crescent Hill Treatment Plant and the B.E. Payne Treatment Plant. In June 2008, the Louisville Water Company received the "Best of the Best" award from the American Water Works Association, citing it as the best-tasting drinking water in the country.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Important events occurring in the city have included the first large space lighted by Edison's light bulb which occurred during the Southern Exposition. (At the time, in 1883, the largest such installation to date.) Also, Louisville had the first library open to African Americans in the South, and medical advances including the first human hand transplant in 1999 and the first self-contained artificial heart transplant.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: In addition, Louisville has been recognized as a "friendship city". The two cities have engaged in many cultural exchange programs, particularly in the fields of nursing and law, and cooperated in several private business developments, including the Frazier History Museum.


title: Louisville, Kentucky

text: Although not technically a sister city, Louisville has friendly and cooperative relations with Chengdu, China.


title: Karen Fukuhara

text: Fukuhara was born to Japanese parents in Los Angeles. Her first language was Japanese, and she attended Japanese language school on Saturdays for 11 years. She has a younger brother. Fukuhara began practicing karate in middle school, and became a brown-striped belt before leaving for college.


title: Karen Fukuhara

text: Fukuhara attended University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) while working as a reporter for a sports show on NHK in Japan. She was a member of the a cappella group Medleys, whose alumni include fellow actress Kelly Marie Tran. Fukuhara graduated from UCLA in 2014 with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and a minor in Theater.


title: Karen Fukuhara

text: Fukuhara got her start in the entertainment industry in middle school when she was cast as a host for "Movie Surfers", a short form entertainment news program on the Disney Channel.


title: Karen Fukuhara

text: Prior to her acting debut, Fukuhara worked various part-time jobs, including as a translator, subtitle editor, and waitress at a reggae-themed sushi restaurant.


title: Karen Fukuhara

text: In 2016, Fukuhara's film debut as Katana in the DC Comics superhero film "Suicide Squad", which was released in August 2016. Although she had prior martial arts experience, Fukuhara trained for about two months during pre-production in order to learn how to wield a sword correctly.


title: Karen Fukuhara

text: Fukuhara voiced the characters Sewer Queen and Alexis in the Cartoon Network series "Craig of the Creek". In 2018, she began voicing Glimmer in "She-Ra and the Princesses of Power", a reboot of the .


title: Karen Fukuhara

text: In 2019, she began starring as Kimiko in the Amazon Prime series "The Boys", based on the comic book of the same name.


title: Karen Fukuhara

text: In 2020, she voiced the titular lead character of "Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts". The series is based on the short-lived webcomic named "Kipo".


title: Claudius

text: Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (; 1 August 10 BC – 13 October AD 54) was the fourth Roman emperor, ruling from AD 41 to 54. A member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Claudius was born to Drusus and Antonia Minor at Lugdunum in Roman Gaul, where his father was stationed as a military legate. He was the first Roman emperor to be born outside Italy. Nonetheless, Claudius was an Italian of Sabine origins.


title: Claudius

text: As he had a limp and slight deafness due to sickness at a young age, he was ostracized by his family and was excluded from public office until his consulship (which was shared with his nephew, Caligula, in 37). Claudius's infirmity probably saved him from the fate of many other nobles during the purges throughout the reigns of Tiberius and Caligula, as potential enemies did not see him as a serious threat. His survival led to him being declared emperor by the Praetorian Guard after Caligula's assassination, at which point he was the last adult male of his family.


title: Claudius

text: Despite his lack of experience, Claudius was an able and efficient administrator. He expanded the imperial bureaucracy to include freedmen, and helped restore the empire's finances after the excesses of Caligula's reign. He was also an ambitious builder, constructing new roads, aqueducts, and canals across the Empire. During his reign the Empire started its successful conquest of Britain. Having a personal interest in law, he presided at public trials, and issued edicts daily. He was seen as vulnerable throughout his reign, particularly by elements of the nobility. Claudius was constantly forced to shore up his position, which resulted in the deaths of many senators. Those events damaged his reputation among the ancient writers, though more recent historians have revised that opinion. Many authors contend that he was murdered by his own wife, Agrippina the Younger. After his death at the age of 63, his grand-nephew and legally adopted step-son, Nero, succeeded him as emperor.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius was born on 1 August 10 BC at Lugdunum (modern Lyon, France). He had two older siblings, Germanicus and Livilla. His mother, Antonia Minor, may have had two other children who died young. Claudius's maternal grandparents were Mark Antony and Octavia Minor, Augustus's sister, and he was therefore the great-great-grandnephew of Gaius Julius Caesar. His paternal grandparents were Livia, Augustus's third wife, and Tiberius Claudius Nero. During his reign, Claudius revived the rumor that his father Nero Claudius Drusus was actually the illegitimate son of Augustus, to give the appearance that Augustus was Claudius's paternal grandfather.


title: Claudius

text: In 9 BC, Claudius's father Drusus died on campaign in Germania from a fall from a horse. Claudius was then raised by his mother, who never remarried. When his disability became evident, the relationship with his family turned sour. Antonia referred to him as a monster, and used him as a standard for stupidity. She seems to have passed her son off to his grandmother Livia for a number of years.


title: Claudius

text: Livia was a little kinder, but nevertheless sent Claudius short, angry letters of reproof. He was put under the care of a "former mule-driver" to keep him disciplined, under the logic that his condition was due to laziness and a lack of willpower. However, by the time he reached his teenage years, his symptoms apparently waned and his family began to take some notice of his scholarly interests.


title: Claudius

text: In AD 7, Livy was hired to tutor Claudius in history, with the assistance of Sulpicius Flavus. He spent a lot of his time with the latter, as well as the philosopher Athenodorus. Augustus, according to a letter, was surprised at the clarity of Claudius's oratory.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius' work as a historian damaged his prospects for advancement in public life. According to Vincent Scramuzza and others, he began work on a history of the Civil Wars that was either too truthful or too critical of Octavian, then reigning as Caesar Augustus. In either case, it was far too early for such an account, and may have only served to remind Augustus that Claudius was Antony's descendant. His mother and grandmother quickly put a stop to it, and this may have convinced them that Claudius was not fit for public office, since he could not be trusted to toe the existing party line.


title: Claudius

text: When Claudius returned to the narrative later in life, he skipped over the wars of the Second Triumvirate altogether; but the damage was done, and his family pushed him into the background. When the Arch of Pavia was erected to honor the Imperial clan in AD 8, Claudius's name (now Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus after his elevation to "pater familias" of the Claudii Nerones on the adoption of his brother) was inscribed on the edge, past the deceased princes, Gaius and Lucius, and Germanicus's children. There is some speculation that the inscription was added by Claudius himself decades later, and that he originally did not appear at all.


title: Claudius

text: When Augustus died in AD 14, Claudius – then aged 23 – appealed to his uncle Tiberius to allow him to begin the "cursus honorum". Tiberius, the new Emperor, responded by granting Claudius consular ornaments. Claudius requested office once more and was snubbed. Since the new emperor was no more generous than the old, Claudius gave up hope of public office and retired to a scholarly, private life.


title: Claudius

text: Despite the disdain of the Imperial family, it seems that from very early on the general public respected Claudius. At Augustus's death, the "equites", or knights, chose Claudius to head their delegation. When his house burned down, the Senate demanded it be rebuilt at public expense. They also requested that Claudius be allowed to debate in the Senate. Tiberius turned down both motions, but the sentiment remained.


title: Claudius

text: During the period immediately after the death of Tiberius's son, Drusus, Claudius was pushed by some quarters as a potential heir. This again suggests the political nature of his exclusion from public life. However, as this was also the period during which the power and terror of the commander of the Praetorian Guard, Sejanus, was at its peak, Claudius chose to downplay this possibility. After the death of Tiberius, the new emperor Caligula (the son of Claudius's brother Germanicus) recognized Claudius to be of some use. He appointed Claudius his co-consul in 37 to emphasize the memory of Caligula's deceased father Germanicus.


title: Claudius

text: Despite this, Caligula tormented his uncle: playing practical jokes, charging him enormous sums of money, humiliating him before the Senate, and the like. According to Cassius Dio, Claudius became sickly and thin by the end of Caligula's reign, most likely due to stress. A possible surviving portrait of Claudius from this period may support this.


title: Claudius

text: On 24 January 41, Caligula was assassinated in a conspiracy involving Cassius Chaerea – a military tribune in the Praetorian Guard – and several senators. There is no evidence that Claudius had a direct hand in the assassination, although it has been argued that he knew about the plot – particularly since he left the scene of the crime shortly before his nephew was murdered. However, after the deaths of Caligula's wife and daughter, it became apparent that Cassius intended to go beyond the terms of the conspiracy and wipe out the Imperial family.


title: Claudius

text: In the chaos following the murder, Claudius witnessed the German guard cut down several uninvolved noblemen, including many of his friends. He fled to the palace to hide. According to tradition, a Praetorian named Gratus found him hiding behind a curtain and suddenly declared him "princeps". A section of the guard may have planned in advance to seek out Claudius, perhaps with his approval. They reassured him that they were not one of the battalions looking for revenge. He was spirited away to the Praetorian camp and put under their protection.


title: Claudius

text: The Senate met and debated a change of government, but this devolved into an argument over which of them would be the new "princeps". When they heard of the Praetorians' claim, they demanded that Claudius be delivered to them for approval, but he refused, sensing the danger that would come with complying. Some historians, particularly Josephus, claim that Claudius was directed in his actions by the Judaean King Herod Agrippa. However, an earlier version of events by the same ancient author downplays Agrippa's role so it remains uncertain. Eventually the Senate was forced to give in. In return, Claudius granted a general amnesty, although he executed a few junior officers involved in the conspiracy. The actual assassins, including Cassius Chaerea and Julius Lupus, the murderer of Caligula's wife and daughter, were put to death to ensure Claudius's own safety and as a future deterrent.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius took several steps to legitimize his rule against potential usurpers, most of them emphasizing his place within the Julio-Claudian family. He adopted the name "Caesar" as a cognomen, as the name still carried great weight with the populace. To do so, he dropped the cognomen "Nero", which he had adopted as "pater familias" of the Claudii Nerones when his brother Germanicus was adopted out. As Pharaoh of Egypt, Claudius adopted the royal titulary "Tiberios Klaudios, Autokrator Heqaheqau Meryasetptah, Kanakht Djediakhshuemakhet" ("Tiberius Claudius, Emperor and ruler of rulers, beloved of Isis and Ptah, the strong bull of the stable moon on the horizon").


title: Claudius

text: While Claudius had never been formally adopted either by Augustus or his successors, he was nevertheless the grandson of Augustus's sister Octavia, and so he felt that he had the right of family. He also adopted the name "Augustus" as the two previous emperors had done at their accessions. He kept the honorific "Germanicus" to display the connection with his heroic brother. He deified his paternal grandmother Livia to highlight her position as wife of the divine Augustus. Claudius frequently used the term "filius Drusi" (son of Drusus) in his titles, to remind the people of his legendary father and lay claim to his reputation.


title: Claudius

text: Since Claudius was the first emperor proclaimed on the initiative of the Praetorian Guard instead of the Senate, his repute suffered at the hands of commentators (such as Seneca). Moreover, he was the first emperor who resorted to bribery as a means to secure army loyalty and rewarded the soldiers of the Praetorian Guard that had elevated him with 15,000 sesterces. Tiberius and Augustus had both left gifts to the army and guard in their wills, and upon Caligula's death the same would have been expected, even if no will existed. Claudius remained grateful to the guard, however, issuing coins with tributes to the Praetorians in the early part of his reign.


title: Claudius

text: Pliny the Elder noted, according to the 1938 Loeb Classical Library translation by Harris Rackham, "... many people do not allow any gems in a signet-ring, and seal with the gold itself; this was a fashion invented when Claudius Cæsar was emperor."


title: Claudius

text: Claudius restored the status of the peaceful Imperial Roman provinces of Macedonia and Achaea as senatorial provinces.


title: Claudius

text: Under Claudius, the Empire underwent its first major expansion since the reign of Augustus. The provinces of Thrace, Noricum, Lycia, and Judea were annexed (or put under direct rule) under various circumstances during his term. The annexation of Mauretania, begun under Caligula, was completed after the defeat of rebel forces, and the official division of the former client kingdom into two Imperial provinces. The most far-reaching conquest was that of Britannia.


title: Claudius

text: In 43, Claudius sent Aulus Plautius with four legions to Britain ("Britannia") after an appeal from an ousted tribal ally. Britain was an attractive target for Rome because of its material wealth – mines and slaves – as well as being a haven for Gallic rebels. Claudius himself traveled to the island after the completion of initial offensives, bringing with him reinforcements and elephants. The Roman "colonia" of "Colonia Claudia Victricensis" was established as the provincial capital of the newly established province of Britannia at Camulodunum, where a large temple was dedicated in his honour.


title: Claudius

text: He left after 16 days, but remained in the provinces for some time. The Senate granted him a triumph for his efforts. Only members of the Imperial family were allowed such honours, but Claudius subsequently lifted this restriction for some of his conquering generals. He was granted the honorific "Britannicus" but only accepted it on behalf of his son, never using the title himself. When the British general Caractacus was captured in 50, Claudius granted him clemency. Caractacus lived out his days on land provided by the Roman state, an unusual end for an enemy commander.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius conducted a census in 48 that found 5,984,072 (adult male) Roman citizens (women, children, slaves, and free adult males without Roman citizenship were not counted), an increase of around a million since the census conducted at Augustus's death. He had helped increase this number through the foundation of Roman colonies that were granted blanket citizenship. These colonies were often made out of existing communities, especially those with elites who could rally the populace to the Roman cause. Several colonies were placed in new provinces or on the border of the Empire to secure Roman holdings as quickly as possible.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius personally judged many of the legal cases tried during his reign. Ancient historians have many complaints about this, stating that his judgments were variable and sometimes did not follow the law. He was also easily swayed. Nevertheless, Claudius paid detailed attention to the operation of the judicial system.


title: Claudius

text: He extended the summer court session, as well as the winter term, by shortening the traditional breaks. Claudius also made a law requiring plaintiffs to remain in the city while their cases were pending, as defendants had previously been required to do. These measures had the effect of clearing out the docket. The minimum age for jurors was also raised to 25 to ensure a more experienced jury pool.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius also settled disputes in the provinces. He freed the island of Rhodes from Roman rule for their good faith and exempted Ilium (Troy) from taxes. Early in his reign, the Greeks and Jews of Alexandria sent him two embassies at once after riots broke out between the two communities. This resulted in the famous "Letter to the Alexandrians", which reaffirmed Jewish rights in the city but also forbade them to move in more families en masse. According to Josephus, he then reaffirmed the rights and freedoms of all the Jews in the Empire.


title: Claudius

text: One of Claudius's investigators discovered that many old Roman citizens based in the city of Tridentum (modern Trento) were not in fact citizens. The Emperor issued a declaration, contained in the "Tabula clesiana", that they would be considered to hold citizenship from then on, since to strip them of their status would cause major problems. However, in individual cases, Claudius punished false assumption of citizenship harshly, making it a capital offense. Similarly, any freedmen found to be laying false claim to membership of the Roman equestrian order were sold back into slavery.


title: Claudius

text: Numerous edicts were issued throughout Claudius's reign. These were on a number of topics, everything from medical advice to moral judgments. A famous medical example is one promoting yew juice as a cure for snakebite. Suetonius wrote that he is even said to have thought of an edict allowing public flatulence for good health. One of the more famous edicts concerned the status of sick slaves. Masters had been abandoning ailing slaves at the temple of Aesculapius on Tiber Island to die instead of providing them with medical assistance and care, and then reclaiming them if they lived. Claudius ruled that slaves who were thus abandoned and recovered after such treatment would be free. Furthermore, masters who chose to kill slaves rather than take care of them were liable to be charged with murder.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius embarked on many public works throughout his reign, both in the capital and in the provinces. He built two aqueducts, the Aqua Claudia, begun by Caligula, and the Aqua Anio Novus. These entered the city in 52 and met at the Porta Maggiore. He also restored a third, the Aqua Virgo.


title: Claudius

text: He paid special attention to transportation. Throughout Italy and the provinces he built roads and canals. Among these was a large canal leading from the Rhine to the sea, as well as a road from Italy to Germany – both begun by his father, Drusus. Closer to Rome, he built a navigable canal on the Tiber, leading to Portus, his new port just north of Ostia. This port was constructed in a semicircle with two moles and a lighthouse at its mouth. The construction also had the effect of reducing flooding in Rome.


title: Claudius

text: The port at Ostia was part of Claudius's solution to the constant grain shortages that occurred in winter, after the Roman shipping season. The other part of his solution was to insure the ships of grain merchants who were willing to risk travelling to Egypt in the off-season. He also granted their sailors special privileges, including citizenship and exemption from the Lex Papia Poppaea, a law that regulated marriage. In addition, he repealed the taxes that Caligula had instituted on food, and further reduced taxes on communities suffering drought or famine.


title: Claudius

text: The last part of Claudius's plan was to increase the amount of arable land in Italy. This was to be achieved by draining the Fucine lake, which would have the added benefit of making the nearby river navigable year-round.


title: Claudius

text: A tunnel was dug through the lake bed, but the plan was a failure. The tunnel was crooked and not large enough to carry the water, which caused it to back up when opened. The resultant flood washed out a large gladiatorial exhibition held to commemorate the opening, causing Claudius to run for his life along with the other spectators. The draining of the lake continued to present a problem well into the Middle Ages. It was finally achieved by the Prince Torlonia in the 19th century, producing over of new arable land. He expanded the Claudian tunnel to three times its original size.


title: Claudius

text: Due to the circumstances of his accession, Claudius took great pains to please the Senate. During regular sessions, the Emperor sat among the Senate body, speaking in turn. When introducing a law, he sat on a bench between the consuls in his position as holder of the power of Tribune (the Emperor could not officially serve as a Tribune of the Plebes as he was a patrician, but it was a power taken by previous rulers). He refused to accept all his predecessors' titles (including Imperator) at the beginning of his reign, preferring to earn them in due course. He allowed the Senate to issue its own bronze coinage for the first time since Augustus. He also put the Imperial provinces of Macedonia and Achaea back under Senate control.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius set about remodeling the Senate into a more efficient, representative body. He chided the senators about their reluctance to debate bills introduced by himself, as noted in the fragments of a surviving speech:


title: Claudius

text: In 47, he assumed the office of "censor" with Lucius Vitellius, which had been allowed to lapse for some time. He struck the names of many senators and "equites" who no longer met qualifications, but showed respect by allowing them to resign in advance. At the same time, he sought to admit eligible men from the provinces. The Lyon Tablet preserves his speech on the admittance of Gallic senators, in which he addresses the Senate with reverence but also with criticism for their disdain of these men. He even jokes about how the Senate had admitted members from beyond Gallia Narbonensis (Lyons, France), i.e. himself. He also increased the number of patricians by adding new families to the dwindling number of noble lines. Here he followed the precedent of Lucius Junius Brutus and Julius Caesar.


title: Claudius

text: Nevertheless, many in the Senate remained hostile to Claudius, and many plots were made on his life. This hostility carried over into the historical accounts. As a result, Claudius reduced the Senate's power for the sake of efficiency. The administration of Ostia was turned over to an Imperial procurator after construction of the port. Administration of many of the empire's financial concerns was turned over to Imperial appointees and freedmen. This led to further resentment and suggestions that these same freedmen were ruling the Emperor.


title: Claudius

text: Several coup attempts were made during Claudius's reign, resulting in the deaths of many senators. Appius Silanus was executed early in Claudius's reign under questionable circumstances. Shortly after, a large rebellion was undertaken by the Senator Vinicianus and Scribonianus, the governor of Dalmatia, and gained quite a few senatorial supporters. It ultimately failed because of the reluctance of Scribonianus's troops, which led to the suicide of the main conspirators.


title: Claudius

text: Many other senators tried different conspiracies and were condemned. Claudius's son-in-law Pompeius Magnus was executed for his part in a conspiracy with his father Crassus Frugi. Another plot involved the consulars Lusiius Saturninus, Cornelius Lupus, and Pompeius Pedo.


title: Claudius

text: In 46, Asinius Gallus, the grandson of Asinius Pollio, and Titus Statilius Taurus Corvinus were exiled for a plot hatched with several of Claudius's own freedmen. Valerius Asiaticus was executed without public trial for unknown reasons. The ancient sources say the charge was adultery, and that Claudius was tricked into issuing the punishment. However, Claudius singles out Asiaticus for special damnation in his speech on the Gauls, which dates over a year later, suggesting that the charge must have been much more serious.


title: Claudius

text: Asiaticus had been a claimant to the throne in the chaos following Caligula's death and a co-consul with the Titus Statilius Taurus Corvinus mentioned above. Most of these conspiracies took place before Claudius's term as Censor, and may have induced him to review the Senatorial rolls. The conspiracy of Gaius Silius in the year after his Censorship, 48, is detailed in book 11 of Tacitus Annal. This section of Tacitus history narrates the alleged conspiracy of Claudius's third wife, Messalina. Suetonius states that a total of 35 senators and 300 knights were executed for offenses during Claudius's reign. Needless to say, the responses to these conspiracies could not have helped Senate–emperor relations.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius was hardly the first emperor to use freedmen to help with the day-to-day running of the Empire. He was, however, forced to increase their role as the powers of the "princeps" became more centralized and the burden larger. This was partly due to the ongoing hostility of the Senate, as mentioned above, but also due to his respect for the senators. Claudius did not want free-born magistrates to have to serve under him, as if they were not peers.


title: Claudius

text: The secretariat was divided into bureaus, with each being placed under the leadership of one freedman. Narcissus was the secretary of correspondence. Pallas became the secretary of the treasury. Callistus became secretary of justice. There was a fourth bureau for miscellaneous issues, which was put under Polybius until his execution for treason. The freedmen could also officially speak for the Emperor, as when Narcissus addressed the troops in Claudius's stead before the conquest of Britain.


title: Claudius

text: Since these were important positions, the senators were aghast at their being placed in the hands of former slaves and "well-known eunuchs". If freedmen had total control of money, letters, and law, it seemed it would not be hard for them to manipulate the Emperor. This is exactly the accusation put forth by the ancient sources. However, these same sources admit that the freedmen were loyal to Claudius.


title: Claudius

text: He was similarly appreciative of them and gave them due credit for policies where he had used their advice. However, if they showed treasonous inclinations, the Emperor did punish them with just force, as in the case of Polybius and Pallas's brother, Felix. There is no evidence that the character of Claudius's policies and edicts changed with the rise and fall of the various freedmen, suggesting that he was firmly in control throughout.


title: Claudius

text: Regardless of the extent of their political power, the freedmen did manage to amass wealth through their positions. Pliny the Elder notes that several of them were richer than Crassus, the richest man of the Republican era.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius, as the author of a treatise on Augustus's religious reforms, felt himself in a good position to institute some of his own. He had strong opinions about the proper form for state religion. He refused the request of Alexandrian Greeks to dedicate a temple to his divinity, saying that only gods may choose new gods. He restored lost days to festivals and got rid of many extraneous celebrations added by Caligula. He re-instituted old observances and archaic language.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius was concerned with the spread of eastern mysteries within the city and searched for more Roman replacements. He emphasized the Eleusinian Mysteries which had been practiced by so many during the Republic. He expelled foreign astrologers, and at the same time rehabilitated the old Roman soothsayers (known as haruspices) as a replacement. He was especially hard on Druidism, because of its incompatibility with the Roman state religion and its proselytizing activities.


title: Claudius

text: According to Suetonius, Claudius was extraordinarily fond of games. He is said to have risen with the crowd after gladiatorial matches and given unrestrained praise to the fighters. Claudius also presided over many new and original events. Soon after coming into power, Claudius instituted games to be held in honor of his father on the latter's birthday. Annual games were also held in honour of his accession, and took place at the Praetorian camp where Claudius had first been proclaimed Emperor.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius organised a performance of the Secular Games, marking the 800th anniversary of the founding of Rome. Augustus had performed the same games less than a century prior. Augustus's excuse was that the interval for the games was 110 years, not 100, but his date actually did not qualify under either reasoning. Claudius also presented naval battles to mark the attempted draining of the Fucine Lake, as well as many other public games and shows.


title: Claudius

text: At Ostia, in front of a crowd of spectators, Claudius fought an orca which was trapped in the harbour. The event was witnessed by Pliny the Elder:


title: Claudius

text: Claudius also restored and adorned many public venues in Rome. At the Circus Maximus, the turning posts and starting stalls were replaced in marble and embellished, and an embankment was probably added to prevent flooding of the track. Claudius also reinforced or extended the seating rules that reserved front seating at the Circus for senators. He rebuilt Pompey's Theatre after it had been destroyed by fire, organising special fights at the re-dedication which he observed from a special platform in the orchestra box.


title: Claudius

text: Suetonius and the other ancient authors accused Claudius of being dominated by women and wives, and of being a womanizer.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius married four times, after two failed betrothals. The first betrothal was to his distant cousin Aemilia Lepida, but was broken for political reasons. The second was to Livia Medullina Camilla, which ended with Medullina's sudden death on their wedding day.


title: Claudius

text: Plautia Urgulanilla was the granddaughter of Livia's confidant Urgulania. During their marriage she gave birth to a son, Claudius Drusus. Drusus died of asphyxiation in his early teens, shortly after becoming engaged to Junilla, the daughter of Sejanus.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius later divorced Urgulanilla for adultery and on suspicion of murdering her sister-in-law Apronia. When Urgulanilla gave birth after the divorce, Claudius repudiated the baby girl, Claudia, as the father was allegedly one of his own freedmen. This action made him later the target of criticism by his enemies.


title: Claudius

text: Soon after (possibly in 28), Claudius married Aelia Paetina, a relative of Sejanus, if not Sejanus's adoptive sister. During their marriage, Claudius and Paetina had a daughter, Claudia Antonia. He later divorced her after the marriage became a political liability, although Leon (1948) suggests it may have been due to emotional and mental abuse by Paetina.


title: Claudius

text: Some years after divorcing Aelia Paetina, in 38 or early 39, Claudius married Valeria Messalina, who was his first cousin once removed (Claudius's grandmother, Octavia the Younger, was Valeria's great-grandmother on both her mother and father's side) and closely allied with Caligula's circle. Shortly thereafter, she gave birth to a daughter, Claudia Octavia. A son, first named Tiberius Claudius Germanicus, and later known as Britannicus, was born just after Claudius's accession.


title: Claudius

text: This marriage ended in tragedy. The ancient historians allege that Messalina was a nymphomaniac who was regularly unfaithful to Claudius—Tacitus states she went so far as to compete with a prostitute to see who could have more sexual partners in a night—and manipulated his policies to amass wealth. In 48, Messalina married her lover Gaius Silius in a public ceremony while Claudius was at Ostia.


title: Claudius

text: Sources disagree as to whether or not she divorced the Emperor first, and whether the intention was to usurp the throne. Under Roman law, the spouse needed to be informed that he or she had been divorced before a new marriage could take place; the sources state that Claudius was in total ignorance until after the marriage. Scramuzza, in his biography, suggests that Silius may have convinced Messalina that Claudius was doomed, and the union was her only hope of retaining rank and protecting her children. The historian Tacitus suggests that Claudius's ongoing term as Censor may have prevented him from noticing the affair before it reached such a critical point. Whatever the case, the result was the execution of Silius, Messalina, and most of her circle.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius did marry once more. The ancient sources tell that his freedmen put forward three candidates, Caligula's third wife Lollia Paulina, Claudius's divorced second wife Aelia Paetina and Claudius's niece Agrippina the Younger. According to Suetonius, Agrippina won out through her feminine wiles. She gradually seized power from Emperor Claudius and successfully conspired to eliminate his son's rivals and she was able to successfully open the way for her son to become emperor.


title: Claudius

text: The truth is probably more political. The attempted coup d'état by Silius and Messalina had probably made Claudius realize the weakness of his position as a member of the Claudian but not the Julian family. This weakness was compounded by the fact that he did not yet have an obvious adult heir, Britannicus being just a boy.


title: Claudius

text: Agrippina was one of the few remaining descendants of Augustus, and her son Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (the future Emperor Nero) was one of the last males of the Imperial family. Coup attempts could rally around the pair and Agrippina was already showing such ambition. It has been suggested that the Senate may have pushed for the marriage, to end the feud between the Julian and Claudian branches. This feud dated back to Agrippina's mother's actions against Tiberius after the death of her husband Germanicus (Claudius's brother), actions which Tiberius had gladly punished. In any case, Claudius accepted Agrippina and later adopted the newly mature Nero as his son.


title: Claudius

text: Nero was married to Claudius's daughter Octavia, made joint heir with the underage Britannicus, and promoted; Augustus had similarly named his grandson Postumus Agrippa and his stepson Tiberius as joint heirs, and Tiberius had named Caligula joint heir with his grandson Tiberius Gemellus. Adoption of adults or near adults was an old tradition in Rome, when a suitable natural adult heir was unavailable as was the case during Britannicus's minority. Claudius may have previously looked to adopt one of his sons-in-law to protect his own reign.


title: Claudius

text: Faustus Cornelius Sulla Felix, who was married to Claudius's daughter Claudia Antonia, was only descended from Octavia and Antony on one side – not close enough to the Imperial family to prevent doubts (although that did not stop others from making him the object of a coup attempt against Nero a few years later). Besides which, he was the half-brother of Valeria Messalina and at this time those wounds were still fresh. Nero was more popular with the general public as the grandson of Germanicus and the direct descendant of Augustus.


title: Claudius

text: The historian Suetonius describes the physical manifestations of Claudius's condition in relatively good detail. His knees were weak and gave way under him and his head shook. He stammered and his speech was confused. He slobbered and his nose ran when he was excited. The Stoic Seneca states in his "Apocolocyntosis" that Claudius's voice belonged to no land animal, and that his hands were weak as well.


title: Claudius

text: However, he showed no physical deformity, as Suetonius notes that when calm and seated he was a tall, well-built figure of "dignitas". When angered or stressed, his symptoms became worse. Historians agree that this condition improved upon his accession to the throne. Claudius himself claimed that he had exaggerated his ailments to save his life.


title: Claudius

text: Modern assessments of his health have changed several times in the past century. Prior to World War II, infantile paralysis (or polio) was widely accepted as the cause. This is the diagnosis used in Robert Graves's Claudius novels, first published in the 1930s. Polio does not explain many of the described symptoms, however, and a more recent theory implicates cerebral palsy as the cause, as outlined by Ernestine Leon. Tourette syndrome has also been considered a possibility.


title: Claudius

text: As a person, ancient historians described Claudius as generous and lowbrow, a man who sometimes lunched with the plebeians. They also paint him as bloodthirsty and cruel, over-fond of gladiatorial combat and executions, and very quick to anger; Claudius himself acknowledged the latter trait, and apologized publicly for his temper. According to the ancient historians he was also excessively trusting, and easily manipulated by his wives and freedmen. But at the same time they portray him as paranoid and apathetic, dull and easily confused.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius's extant works present a different view, painting a picture of an intelligent, scholarly, well-read, and conscientious administrator with an eye to detail and justice. Thus, Claudius becomes an enigma. Since the discovery of his "Letter to the Alexandrians" in the last century, much work has been done to rehabilitate Claudius and determine where the truth lies.


title: Claudius

text: Claudius wrote copiously throughout his life. Arnaldo Momigliano states that during the reign of Tiberius – which covers the peak of Claudius's literary career – it became impolitic to speak of republican Rome. The trend among the young historians was to either write about the new empire or obscure antiquarian subjects. Claudius was the rare scholar who covered both.


title: Claudius

text: Besides the history of Augustus's reign that caused him so much grief, his major works included "Tyrrhenica", a twenty-book Etruscan history, and "Carchedonica", an eight-volume history of Carthage, as well as an Etruscan dictionary. He also wrote a book on dice-playing. Despite the general avoidance of the Republican era, he penned a defense of Cicero against the charges of Asinius Gallus. Modern historians have used this to determine the nature of his politics and of the aborted chapters of his civil war history.


title: Claudius

text: He proposed a reform of the Latin alphabet by the addition of three new letters. He officially instituted the change during his censorship but they did not survive his reign. Claudius also tried to revive the old custom of putting dots between successive words (Classical Latin was written with no spacing). Finally, he wrote an eight-volume autobiography that Suetonius describes as lacking in taste. Claudius (like most of the members of his dynasty) harshly criticized his predecessors and relatives in surviving speeches.


title: Claudius

text: None of the works survive but live on as sources for the surviving histories of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Suetonius quotes Claudius's autobiography once and must have used it as a source numerous times. Tacitus uses Claudius's arguments for the orthographical innovations mentioned above and may have used him for some of the more antiquarian passages in his annals. Claudius is the source for numerous passages of Pliny's "Natural History".


title: Claudius

text: The influence of historical study on Claudius is obvious. In his speech on Gallic senators, he uses a version of the founding of Rome identical to that of Livy, his tutor in adolescence. The speech is meticulous in details, a common mark of all his extant works, and he goes into long digressions on related matters. This indicates a deep knowledge of a variety of historical subjects that he could not but share. Many of the public works instituted in his reign were based on plans first suggested by Julius Caesar. Levick believes this emulation of Caesar may have spread to all aspects of his policies.


title: Claudius

text: His censorship seems to have been based on those of his ancestors, particularly Appius Claudius Caecus, and he used the office to put into place many policies based on those of Republican times. This is when many of his religious reforms took effect, and his building efforts greatly increased during his tenure. In fact, his assumption of the office of Censor may have been motivated by a desire to see his academic labors bear fruit. For example, he believed (as most Romans did) that Caecus had used the censorship to introduce the letter "R" and so used his own term to introduce his new letters.


title: Claudius

text: The consensus of ancient historians was that Claudius was murdered by poison – possibly contained in mushrooms or on a feather – and died in the early hours of 13 October 54.


title: Claudius

text: Nearly all implicate his final and powerful wife, Agrippina, as the instigator. Agrippina and Claudius had become more combative in the months leading up to his death. This carried on to the point where Claudius openly lamented his bad wives, and began to comment on Britannicus' approaching manhood with an eye towards restoring his status within the imperial family. Agrippina had motive in ensuring the succession of Nero before Britannicus could gain power.


title: Claudius

text: Some implicate either his taster Halotus, his doctor Xenophon, or the infamous poisoner Locusta as the administrator of the fatal substance. Some say he died after prolonged suffering following a single dose at dinner, and some have him recovering only to be poisoned again. Among contemporary sources, Seneca the Younger ascribed the emperor's death to natural causes, while Josephus only spoke of rumors on his poisoning.


title: Claudius

text: Some historians have cast doubt on whether Claudius was murdered or merely died from illness or old age. Evidence against his murder include his old age, his serious illnesses in his last years, his unhealthy lifestyle and the fact that his taster Halotus continued to serve in the same position under Nero. On the other hand, some modern scholars claim the near universality of the accusations in ancient texts lends credence to the crime. Claudius's ashes were interred in the Mausoleum of Augustus on 24 October 54, after a funeral similar to that of his great-uncle Augustus 40 years earlier.


title: Claudius

text: Already, while alive, he received the widespread private worship of a living "princeps" and was worshipped in Britannia in his own temple in Camulodunum.


title: Claudius

text: Agrippina had sent away Narcissus shortly before Claudius's death, and now murdered the freedman. The last act of this secretary of letters was to burn all of Claudius's correspondence — most likely so it could not be used against him and others in an already hostile new regime. Thus Claudius's private words about his own policies and motives were lost to history. Just as Claudius had criticized his predecessors in official edicts (see below), Nero often criticized the deceased Emperor and many Claudian laws and edicts were disregarded under the reasoning that he was too stupid and senile to have meant them.


title: Claudius

text: Seneca's Apocolocyntosis mocks the deification of Claudius and reinforces the view of Claudius as an unpleasant fool; this remained the official view for the duration of Nero's reign. Eventually Nero stopped referring to his deified adoptive father at all, and realigned with his birth family. Claudius's temple was left unfinished after only some of the foundation had been laid down. Eventually the site was overtaken by Nero's Golden House.


title: Claudius

text: The Flavians, who had risen to prominence under Claudius, took a different tack. They were in a position where they needed to shore up their legitimacy, but also justify the fall of the Julio-Claudians. They reached back to Claudius in contrast with Nero, to show that they were good associated with good. Commemorative coins were issued of Claudius and his son Britannicus, who had been a friend of the Emperor Titus (Titus was born in 39, Britannicus was born in 41). When Nero's Golden House was burned, the Temple of Claudius was finally completed on the Caelian Hill.


title: Claudius

text: However, as the Flavians became established, they needed to emphasize their own credentials more, and their references to Claudius ceased. Instead, he was lumped with the other emperors of the fallen dynasty. His state cult in Rome probably continued until the abolition of all such cults of dead Emperors by Maximinus Thrax in 237–238. The "Feriale Duranum", probably identical to the festival calendars of every regular army unit, assigns him a sacrifice of a steer on his birthday, the Kalends of August. And such commemoration (and consequent feasting) probably continued until the Christianization and disintegration of the army in the late 4th century.


title: Claudius

text: The ancient historians Tacitus, Suetonius (in "The Twelve Caesars"), and Cassius Dio all wrote after the last of the Flavians had gone. All three were senators or "equites". They took the side of the Senate in most conflicts with the Princeps, invariably viewing him as being in the wrong. This resulted in biases, both conscious and unconscious. Suetonius lost access to the official archives shortly after beginning his work. He was forced to rely on second-hand accounts when it came to Claudius (with the exception of Augustus's letters, which had been gathered earlier). Suetonius painted Claudius as a ridiculous figure, belittling many of his acts and attributing the objectively good works to his retinue.


title: Claudius

text: Tacitus wrote a narrative for his fellow senators and fitted each of the emperors into a simple mold of his choosing. He wrote of Claudius as a passive pawn and an idiot in affairs relating to the palace and often in public life. During his censorship of 47–48 Tacitus allows the reader a glimpse of a Claudius who is more statesmanlike (XI.23–25), but it is a mere glimpse. Tacitus is usually held to have 'hidden' his use of Claudius's writings and to have omitted Claudius's character from his works. Even his version of Claudius's Lyons tablet speech is edited to be devoid of the Emperor's personality. Dio was less biased, but seems to have used Suetonius and Tacitus as sources. Thus, the conception of Claudius as the weak fool, controlled by those he supposedly ruled, was preserved for the ages.


title: Claudius

text: As time passed, Claudius was mostly forgotten outside of the historians's accounts. His books were lost first, as their antiquarian subjects became unfashionable. In the 2nd century, Pertinax, who shared his birthday, became emperor, overshadowing commemoration of Claudius.


title: Claudius

text: In literature, Claudius and his contemporaries appear in the historical novel "The Roman" by Mika Waltari. Canadian-born science fiction writer A. E. van Vogt reimagined Robert Graves's Claudius story, in his two novels, "Empire of the Atom" and "The Wizard of Linn".


title: Claudius

text: The historical novel "Chariot of the Soul" by Linda Proud features Claudius as host and mentor of the young Togidubnus, son of King Verica of the Atrebates, during his ten-year stay in Rome. When Togidubnus returns to Britain in advance of the Roman army, it is with a mission given to him by Claudius.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: Club Internacional de Fútbol Miami, known as Inter Miami CF or simply Inter Miami, is an American professional soccer club based in the Miami metropolitan area. Established in 2018, the club began play in Major League Soccer (MLS) in the 2020 season. The club currently plays its home MLS matches at DRV PNK Stadium, the site of the former Lockhart Stadium in nearby Fort Lauderdale, Florida.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: In November 2012, MLS commissioner Don Garber confirmed the league's renewed interest in placing an expansion franchise in Miami, after the Miami Fusion folded following the 2001 season and an expansion bid led by Miami-based Bolivian telecom entrepreneur Marcelo Claure and FC Barcelona failed in 2009.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: When David Beckham, who had received an option to purchase an expansion team at a price of $25 million when he joined the league in 2007, ended his playing career in April 2013, the league held preliminary discussions with Beckham's advisers about several expansion targets, including Miami. That same year, other investors, including Italian financier Alessandro Butini and Miami Dolphins owner Stephen M. Ross expressed interest in owning a Miami franchise as well.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: In his December 2013 State of the League address, Garber identified Beckham and Simon Fuller as potential owners in Miami. Later that month, on December 17, Miami-Dade County commissioners voted unanimously to allow Mayor Carlos A. Giménez to negotiate with the Beckham-led group on a new stadium in downtown Miami.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: The league announced that Beckham exercised his option on February 5, 2014, and that Miami Beckham United, the investment group led by Beckham, Fuller and Claure, would own an expansion franchise in Miami, assuming that financing for a stadium could be agreed upon. In presentations to officials and potential investors, the ownership group used "Miami Vice" and "Miami Current" as working titles for the club. After its initial stadium proposals fell through, Commissioner Garber reiterated in August 2014 that the expansion would not be approved until a downtown stadium plan was secured. Beckham bought Fuller out in May 2019.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: On January 29, 2018, the Miami Beckham United group, four years after the ownership's original announcement of pursuing a team, was awarded the twenty-fifth MLS franchise and was set to launch in the 2020 season. The announcement represented part of a larger MLS expansion that would increase its number of teams to 26 by 2020 and 30 after that. Since Beckham's original announcement of his intention to place a team in Miami in 2014, Orlando City, New York City FC, Atlanta United, Minnesota United, Los Angeles FC, and FC Cincinnati have all begun MLS play. Paul McDonough was hired as sporting director effective August 4.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: The team's ownership now operates through Miami Freedom Park LLC. Some graphics used by the group have evoked the Freedom Tower, a city landmark.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: "Club Internacional de Fútbol Miami", or "Inter Miami CF" for short, was announced as the club's name on September 5, 2018.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: On December 30, 2019, former Uruguay national team player and C.F. Monterrey manager Diego Alonso was announced as the club's inaugural head coach.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: Inter Miami's first MLS game was played on March 1, 2020, losing 1–0, away to Los Angeles FC. Designated Player Rodolfo Pizarro scored the first goal in Inter Miami history the following game on March 7, in a 2–1 loss to D.C. United. Their first home match was supposed to be on March 14, 2020, against LA Galaxy, Beckham's former club. The match has since been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On August 23, 2020, Inter Miami recorded their first franchise victory, 3–2 over Orlando City. On January 18, 2021, England Women's manager Phil Neville was appointed as the new head coach, and Seattle Sounders FC's Chris Henderson as chief soccer officer and sporting director.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: On May 28, 2021, MLS announced that it would sanction Inter Miami CF, owner Jorge Mas, and former sporting director Paul McDonough for violating roster rules during the 2020 season. The club had signed Blaise Matuidi and Andrés Reyes using targeted allocation money (TAM) to comply with salary cap requirements and avoid using its three Designated Player slots, but were found to have exceeded the TAM maximum of $1.61 million per player. MLS fined the club $2 million and reduced its allocation dollars by $2.27 million for the 2022 and 2023 seasons, while Mas was fined $250,000 and McDonough was suspended from league activities through the end of the 2022 season. Prior to the announcement, Matuidi was reclassified as a Designated Player by taking the slot occupied by Matías Pellegrini, who was loaned to Fort Lauderdale CF after his contract was bought out by the club.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: The Miami Beckham United group unveiled the team's name and colors on September 5, 2018. The name was announced as Club Internacional de Fútbol Miami (Inter Miami CF). The crest, designed in style and colors that recall the city's Art Deco architectural tradition, displays two great white herons with interlocking legs forming a letter "M". Between the herons is an eclipse, the sun bearing seven rays in an homage to the number Beckham often wore as a player. The team colors are pink, black and white. The full achievement displays the team name encircling all with the Roman numerals "MMXX" representing the year 2020, the inaugural season of play.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: The species of the birds in the crest was the subject of debate after its announcement and unveiling, with some speculating them to be flamingos and egrets. The team later announced that the birds are white herons.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: The club's name has been the subject of a trademark dispute with Italian club Inter Milan, which had filed a claim with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the protected use of "Inter" in 2014. MLS filed an objection to the trademark claim in April 2019, arguing that the name "Inter" was generic due to its use by other clubs and could not be claimed exclusively. , the case continues.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: In March 2020, Inter Miami began to play in Fort Lauderdale. They will continue to do so until their new stadium, to be known as Miami Freedom Park, is completed. The current proposal is for a 25,000-seat stadium that would form part of Freedom Park, a mixed-use complex on the present site of the city-owned Melreese Country Club near the Miami International Airport. Approval for construction of the stadium depended on the outcome of a public referendum held on November 6, 2018. The result of the referendum had roughly 60 percent of voters approving the measure to convert the city-owned golf course near the international airport into Inter Miami CF's new stadium, Miami Freedom Park.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: The proposed development, to be built on public land, will include of office, retail and commercial space, 750 hotel rooms, of public soccer fields in addition to the stadium, and the remaining will be a public park. The owners will also make annual installments of $20 million for 30 years for improvements to public parks across the city. The agreement still requires the approval of a four-vote supermajority of the five City of Miami commissioners. The plan had faced opposition from supporters of the golf club and many details, such as fiscal responsibility for toxic incinerator ash in the soil, remain to be worked out.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: The decision follows a lengthy exploration of options. Some locations that had previously been considered included: Dodge Island at PortMiami (2013), the Downtown Miami waterfront at Museum Park (2014), a site adjacent to MLB's Marlins Park (2015), and a privately owned site in Miami's Overtown (2015–16). The team also considered the Riccardo Silva Stadium at Florida International University.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: DRV PNK Stadium is a soccer stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on the site of the former Lockhart Stadium. The stadium is oriented north–south for soccer configuration, so the sun won't be in the eyes of the goalie. The stadium is the primary headquarters for the team and its youth academy in addition to further training grounds.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: The Fort Lauderdale Strikers announced in 2016 that they were moving out of Lockhart Stadium, after which the stadium fell into a state of disrepair. In late January 2019, Inter Miami announced its intentions to pursue the Lockhart Stadium site to serve as the club's training ground for its first team, USL League One reserve team Fort Lauderdale CF, and youth academy. The development would also include an 18,000-seat stadium, which will serve as the permanent home of Fort Lauderdale CF and as the interim home for Inter Miami for at least the first two seasons while the Miami Freedom Park stadium is under construction. The Fort Lauderdale city council unanimously approved Inter Miami's bid for the Lockhart Stadium site in March 2019. In April, the Fort Lauderdale City Commission cleared Inter Miami to begin the demolition process. On July 9, 2019, the Fort Lauderdale City Commission unanimously approved a 50-year lease agreement for the Lockhart Stadium site with Inter Miami; under the terms of the agreement, the city will retain ownership of the property while the soccer club will be responsible for the construction, operation, and maintenance of the new facilities.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: In late January 2019, the club announced its intentions to pursue the Lockhart Stadium site in Fort Lauderdale to serve as the club's training ground for its first team, youth academy, and future United Soccer League (USL) team.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: The new training complex consist of over of grass and green space, that will include various amenities such as a park, youth soccer fields, and a community center. Upon completion, the complex is used as the permanent training facilities for all levels of Inter Miami's teams ranging from their Youth Academy teams and USL League One team to the first team that plays in MLS.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: The ownership group behind the franchise was first formed in 2013 as Miami Beckham United, though it now trades under the name Miami Freedom Park LLC. The original ownership group was led by Miami-based Bolivian businessman Marcelo Claure, while Masayoshi Son and brothers Jorge and Jose Mas were added to the ownership group in 2017. The effort originated in a contract David Beckham signed with MLS in 2007; he joined LA Galaxy and negotiated an option to own an expansion team at a discounted franchise fee.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: On September 17, 2021, it was announced that Beckham and the Mas brothers had bought out Claure and Son's stakes in the ownership group. Ares Management was also added to the ownership group.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: This is a partial list of the last five seasons completed by Inter Miami. For the full season-by-season history, see List of Inter Miami CF seasons.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: On October 9, 2019, the club announced that they will be fielding a reserve team in the third tier of US Soccer, USL League One. This team allows the club to prepare future players with quality competition in hopes of being called up to the first team. The unnamed League One Miami team will train at the training facilities of Inter Miami CF Stadium.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: The team was to open their inaugural season on March 27, 2020, against Union Omaha at Inter Miami CF Stadium but the match was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: On February 24, 2022, Fort Lauderdale CF announced that the team had rebranded as Inter Miami CF II ahead of their move to the MLS Next Pro, the new reserve league for MLS teams.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: The Inter Miami CF Academy is the official youth academy and development system of Inter Miami CF that was established in 2019. The academy consists of various levels of age groups, ranging from U-12 to U-17. These teams will also train at the training grounds in Inter Miami CF Stadium alongside their MLS and USL League One counterparts. All of Inter Miami's youth teams compete in the MLS Next soccer league as of the inaugural 2022 season. The system covers the under-12, under-13, under-14, under-15, and under-17 age groups.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: The team's first three matches in the 2020 season were assigned to national broadcasts; a broadcast deal was not announced before the suspension of play due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the team did announce that Ray Hudson will serve as color commentator, Andres Cordero will serve as the play-by-play commentator, joined by Fernando Fiore as the host, and Kaylyn Kyle as the sideline reporter. On April 3, 2020, the club announced a regional English-language television deal with CBS Television Stations, under which its regional matches will air on MyNetworkTV affiliate WBFS-TV, with selected matches airing on CBS station WFOR-TV. Then on April 30, the club announced a Spanish rights deal with Univision, where games will be aired on its TV affiliate WAMI and radio affiliate WQBA, with a broadcast team consisting of Ramses Sandoval, , , , Nicholas Cantor and Tony Cherchi.


title: Inter Miami CF

text: With every MLS game available on Apple TV via their rights deal in 2023, Inter Miami games will be broadcast almost exclusively on this service, with exceptions for certain national linear television broadcast partners.


title: Angela Davis

text: Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Ideologically a Marxist and feminist, Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). She is the author of more than ten books on class, gender, race, and the U.S. prison system.


title: Angela Davis

text: Born to an African-American family in Birmingham, Alabama, Davis studied French at Brandeis University and philosophy at the University of Frankfurt in West Germany. Studying under the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, an adherent of the Frankfurt School, Davis became increasingly engaged in far-left politics. Returning to the United States, she studied at the University of California, San Diego, before moving to East Germany, where she completed a doctorate at the Humboldt University of Berlin. After returning to the United States, she joined the Communist Party and became involved in numerous causes, including the second-wave feminist movement and the campaign against the Vietnam War. In 1969, she was hired as an acting assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). UCLA's governing Board of Regents soon fired her due to her Communist Party membership; after a court ruled the firing illegal, the university fired her again, this time for her use of inflammatory language.


title: Angela Davis

text: In 1970, guns belonging to Davis were used in an armed takeover of a courtroom in Marin County, California, in which four people were killed. Prosecuted for three capital felonies, including conspiracy to murder, she was held in jail for over a year before being acquitted of all charges in 1972. She visited Eastern Bloc countries in the 1970s and, during the 1980s, was twice the Communist Party's candidate for vice president; at the time, she also held the position of professor of ethnic studies at San Francisco State University. Much of her work focused on the abolition of prisons and in 1997, she co-founded Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison–industrial complex. In 1991, amid the dissolution of the Soviet Union, she was part of a faction in the Communist Party that broke away to establish the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. Also in 1991, she joined the feminist studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she became department director before retiring in 2008. Since then she has continued to write and remained active in movements such as Occupy and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.


title: Angela Davis

text: Davis has received various awards, including the Soviet Union's Lenin Peace Prize. Accused of supporting political violence, she has sustained criticism from the highest levels of the US government. She has also been criticized for supporting the Soviet Union and its satellites. Davis has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. In 2020, she was listed as the 1971 "Woman of the Year" in "Time" magazine's "100 Women of the Year" edition, which selected iconic women over the 100 years since women's suffrage in the United States of America from 1920. In 2020, she was included on "Time"s list of the 100 most influential people in the world.


title: Angela Davis

text: Angela Davis was born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama. Her family lived in the "Dynamite Hill" neighborhood, which was marked in the 1950s by the bombings of houses in an attempt to intimidate and drive out middle-class black people who had moved there. Davis occasionally spent time on her uncle's farm and with friends in New York City. Her siblings include two brothers, Ben and Reginald, and a sister, Fania. Ben played defensive back for the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She was christened at her father's Episcopal church.


title: Angela Davis

text: Davis attended Carrie A. Tuggle School, a segregated black elementary school, and later, Parker Annex, a middle-school branch of Parker High School in Birmingham. During this time, Davis's mother, Sallye Bell Davis, was a national officer and leading organizer of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, an organization influenced by the Communist Party aimed at building alliances among African Americans in the South. Davis grew up surrounded by communist organizers and thinkers, who significantly influenced her intellectual development. Among them was the Southern Negro Youth Congress official Louis E. Burnham, whose daughter Margaret Burnham was Davis's friend from childhood, as well as her co-counsel during Davis's 1971 trial for murder and kidnapping.


title: Angela Davis

text: Davis was involved in her church youth group as a child, and attended Sunday school regularly. She attributes much of her political involvement to her involvement with the Girl Scouts of the United States of America. She also participated in the Girl Scouts 1959 national roundup in Colorado. As a Girl Scout, she marched and picketed to protest racial segregation in Birmingham.


title: Angela Davis

text: By her junior year of high school, Davis had been accepted by an American Friends Service Committee (Quaker) program that placed black students from the South in integrated schools in the North. She chose Elisabeth Irwin High School in Greenwich Village. There she was recruited by a communist youth group, Advance.


title: Angela Davis

text: Davis was awarded a scholarship to Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where she was one of three black students in her class. She encountered the Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse at a rally during the Cuban Missile Crisis and became his student. In a 2007 television interview, Davis said, "Herbert Marcuse taught me that it was possible to be an academic, an activist, a scholar, and a revolutionary." She worked part-time to earn enough money to travel to France and Switzerland and attended the eighth World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki. She returned home in 1963 to a Federal Bureau of Investigation interview about her attendance at the communist-sponsored festival.


title: Angela Davis

text: During her second year at Brandeis, Davis decided to major in French and continued her intensive study of philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre. She was accepted by the Hamilton College Junior Year in France Program. Classes were initially at Biarritz and later at the Sorbonne. In Paris, she and other students lived with a French family. She was in Biarritz when she learned of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, committed by members of the Ku Klux Klan, in which four black girls were killed. She grieved deeply as she was personally acquainted with the victims.


title: Angela Davis

text: While completing her degree in French, Davis realized that her primary area of interest was philosophy. She was particularly interested in Marcuse's ideas. On returning to Brandeis, she sat in on his course. She wrote in her autobiography that Marcuse was approachable and helpful. She began making plans to attend the University of Frankfurt for graduate work in philosophy. In 1965, she graduated "magna cum laude", a member of Phi Beta Kappa.


title: Angela Davis

text: In Germany, with a monthly stipend of $100, she lived first with a German family and later with a group of students in a loft in an old factory. After visiting East Berlin during the annual May Day celebration, she felt that the East German government was dealing better with the residual effects of fascism than were the West Germans. Many of her roommates were active in the radical Socialist German Student Union (SDS), and Davis participated in some SDS actions. Events in the United States, including the formation of the Black Panther Party and the transformation of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to an all-black organization, drew her interest upon her return.


title: Angela Davis

text: Marcuse had moved to a position at the University of California, San Diego, and Davis followed him there after her two years in Frankfurt. Davis traveled to London to attend a conference on "The Dialectics of Liberation". The black contingent at the conference included the Trinidadian-American Stokely Carmichael and the British Michael X. Although moved by Carmichael's rhetoric, Davis was reportedly disappointed by her colleagues' black nationalist sentiments and their rejection of communism as a "white man's thing".


title: Angela Davis

text: She joined the Che-Lumumba Club, an all-black branch of the Communist Party USA named for revolutionaries Che Guevara and Patrice Lumumba, of Cuba and Congo, respectively.


title: Angela Davis

text: Davis earned a master's degree from the University of California, San Diego, in 1968. She earned a doctorate in philosophy at the Humboldt University in East Berlin.


title: Angela Davis

text: Beginning in 1969, Davis was an acting assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Although both Princeton and Swarthmore had tried to recruit her, she opted for UCLA because of its urban location. At that time she was known as a radical feminist and activist, a member of the Communist Party USA, and an affiliate of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party.


title: Angela Davis

text: In 1969, the University of California initiated a policy against hiring Communists. At their September 19, 1969 meeting, the Board of Regents fired Davis from her $10,000-a-year post because of her membership in the Communist Party, urged on by California Governor and future president Ronald Reagan. Judge Jerry Pacht ruled the Regents could not fire Davis solely because of her affiliation with the Communist Party, and she resumed her post. The Regents fired Davis again on June 20, 1970, for the "inflammatory language" she had used in four different speeches. The report stated, "We deem particularly offensive such utterances as her statement that the regents 'killed, brutalized (and) murdered' the , and her repeated characterizations of the police as 'pigs.<ref name="Regents/UCLA"></ref> The American Association of University Professors censured the board for this action.


title: Angela Davis

text: Davis was a supporter of the Soledad Brothers, three inmates who were accused and charged with the killing of a prison guard at Soledad Prison.


title: Angela Davis

text: On August 7, 1970, heavily armed 17-year-old African-American high-school student Jonathan Jackson, whose brother was George Jackson, one of the three Soledad Brothers, gained control of a courtroom in Marin County, California. He armed the black defendants and took Judge Harold Haley, the prosecutor, and three female jurors as hostages. As Jackson transported the hostages and two black defendants away from the courtroom, one of the defendants, James McClain, shot at the police. The police returned fire. The judge and the three black men were killed in the melee; one of the jurors and the prosecutor were injured. Although the judge was shot in the head with a blast from a shotgun, he also suffered a chest wound from a bullet that may have been fired from outside the van. Evidence during the trial showed that either could have been fatal. Davis had purchased several of the firearms Jackson used in the attack, including the shotgun used to shoot Haley, which she bought at a San Francisco pawn shop two days before the incident. She was also found to have been corresponding with one of the inmates involved.


title: Angela Davis

text: As California considers "all persons concerned in the commission of a crime, ... whether they directly commit the act constituting the offense, or aid and abet in its commission, ... are principals in any crime so committed", Davis was charged with "aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder in the death of Judge Harold Haley", and Marin County Superior Court Judge Peter Allen Smith issued a warrant for her arrest. Hours after the judge issued the warrant on August 14, 1970, a massive attempt to find and arrest Davis began. On August 18, four days after the warrant was issued, the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover listed Davis on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List; she was the third woman and the 309th person to be listed.


title: Angela Davis

text: Soon after, Davis became a fugitive and fled California. According to her autobiography, during this time she hid in friends' homes and moved at night. On October 13, 1970, FBI agents found her at a Howard Johnson Motor Lodge in New York City. President Richard M. Nixon congratulated the FBI on its "capture of the dangerous terrorist Angela Davis."


title: Angela Davis

text: On January 5, 1971, Davis appeared at Marin County Superior Court and declared her innocence before the court and nation: "I now declare publicly before the court, before the people of this country that I am innocent of all charges which have been leveled against me by the state of California." John Abt, general counsel of the Communist Party USA, was one of the first attorneys to represent Davis for her alleged involvement in the shootings.


title: Angela Davis

text: While being held in the Women's Detention Center, Davis was initially segregated from other prisoners, in solitary confinement. With the help of her legal team, she obtained a federal court order to get out of the segregated area.


title: Angela Davis

text: Across the nation, thousands of people began organizing a movement to gain her release. In New York City, black writers formed a committee called the Black People in Defense of Angela Davis. By February 1971, more than 200 local committees in the United States, and 67 in foreign countries, worked to free Davis from jail. John Lennon and Yoko Ono contributed to this campaign with the song "Angela". In 1972, after a 16-month incarceration, the state allowed her release on bail from county jail. On February 23, 1972, Rodger McAfee, a dairy farmer from Fresno, California, paid her $100,000 bail with the help of Steve Sparacino, a wealthy business owner. The United Presbyterian Church paid some of her legal defense expenses.