The emperor Claudius of Rome ruled an empire spanning three continents between 41 and 54 CE. His reign was of massive importance to the history of ancient European civilization. In fact, the emperor was among the most innovative, fair, and wise in all Roman history. However, because Claudius suffered from physical handicaps and spoke with a stutter, ancient authors were biased against him. Consequently, their descriptions of his time in power are almost uniformly hostile, and many ancient historians ignore all of the good that he did.
Claudius’s reign was important for its major innovations. He conquered the island of Britain and incorporated it into the Roman Empire. He also built a new harbor for Rome and oversaw the construction of several new aqueducts, which brought clean water into the city. He even created laws to protect the rights of slaves and expand Roman citizenship to new people. All of these facts suggest that he was a gifted ruler with strong judgment, despite what may be found in histories written by his detractors.
Another reason for the hostility of ancient authors toward the reign of Claudius has to do with the fact that the writers were usually of senatorial class. Claudius was not elected to power by the Senate and severely limited its traditional powers during his reign. However, illustrating his wisdom, instead of entrusting high bureaucratic positions to senators, he preferred to give them to trustworthy slaves and former slaves (freedmen), whom he felt were more loyal to him. They worked efficiently, creating a bureaucratic framework for all future emperors. Claudius should be praised for giving political opportunities to new groups of people such as former slaves and even the women of the imperial household, including his wives.
The text and the lecture offer two opposing views about the emperor Claudius of Rome. While the reading passage lists reasons to consider Claudius as an innovative, fair and wise emperor, the professor challenges those specific points.
First, the professor refutes the idea that Claudius was an innovative emperor. While he agrees that the construction of aqueducts and ports were, indeed, useful and brought benefit to his reign, Claudius biggest “innovation” set a dangerous precedent. He came to power by paying off the army after the assassination of the previous emperor, a pattern that other people followed, which caused Rome to plunge into constant civil war.
Second, Claudius was questionably a fair person. Although the passage mentions that he protected the rights of slaves and expanded Roman citizenship, the professor points out that his sense of fairness was strongly contradicted by other behaviors. He elaborates on this by explaining that he was a bad judge that made legal decisions without listening to both sides of the case. Furthermore, he hosted violent gladiators’ games just for the entertainment of people.
Finally, the professor disagrees with the text in that Claudius was a wise emperor. According to the text, Claudius showed his wisdom by entrusting trustworthy slaves into bureaucratic positions, whom worked more efficiently. However, the professor questions this point by noting that slaves were easily to corrupt and more prone to bribery. Furthermore, he mentions that Claudius ‘decision of choosing Nero as his successor resulted in a disaster and brought ruin to Rome, discrediting the emperor´s wisdom.
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Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, first, furthermore, however, if, second, so, while
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 7.0 10.4613686534 67% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 0.0 5.04856512141 0% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 7.30242825607 96% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 12.0772626932 99% => OK
Pronoun: 24.0 22.412803532 107% => OK
Preposition: 33.0 30.3222958057 109% => OK
Nominalization: 3.0 5.01324503311 60% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1426.0 1373.03311258 104% => OK
No of words: 256.0 270.72406181 95% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.5703125 5.08290768461 110% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.0 4.04702891845 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.17210590293 2.5805825403 123% => OK
Unique words: 154.0 145.348785872 106% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.6015625 0.540411800872 111% => OK
syllable_count: 431.1 419.366225166 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.55342163355 109% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 3.25607064018 123% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.23620309051 85% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 1.25165562914 240% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.51434878587 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 2.5761589404 39% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 13.0 13.0662251656 99% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 21.2450331126 89% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.1108774342 49.2860985944 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 109.692307692 110.228320801 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.6923076923 21.698381199 91% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.53846153846 7.06452816374 64% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 4.19205298013 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 4.33554083885 185% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 4.45695364238 90% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.27373068433 23% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.230082513701 0.272083759551 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0958549104219 0.0996497079465 96% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0692038244423 0.0662205650399 105% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.151107799829 0.162205337803 93% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0331065547612 0.0443174109184 75% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.6 13.3589403974 109% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 53.8541721854 81% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 5.55761589404 158% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 11.0289183223 108% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.03 12.2367328918 123% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.76 8.42419426049 116% => OK
difficult_words: 84.0 63.6247240618 132% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 10.7273730684 103% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 10.498013245 91% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.2008830022 89% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 90.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 27.0 Out of 30
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.