Tiberius Claudius Drusus

Tiberius Claudius Drusus (c. AD 9/1220/27) was the eldest son of the Roman Emperor Claudius with his first wife Plautia Urgulanilla. He had one younger sister, Claudia, who was repudiated by Claudius along with Plautia.

Background Tiberius Claudius Drusus' grandfather was Marcus Plautius Silvanus and his great-grandmother was Urgulania. Livia, the future emperor Claudius’ grandmother and the wife of the emperor Augustus, is presumed to have helped her friend Urgulania to arrange the marriage of Claudius and Plautia Urgulanilla when her grandson was around 18. Claudius married Plautia Urgulanilla sometime between 9 and 12 AD. Tiberius Claudius Drusus was born soon after the marriage, decades before his father became emperor. In AD 20 Sejanus was reaching the height of his power, and the birth of his daughter offered an opportunity to connect his own family with the imperial Julio-Claudian dynasty. This betrothal filled Sejanus, then just a prefect, with unfulfilled hopes. The Roman historian Tacitus wrote that the people were not satisfied with this match as they were with the betrothal of Claudius Drusus's cousin, Nero Caesar, son of the popular general Germanicus Julius Caesar. Probably it was felt the nobility of the family was to be polluted; Sejanus was not of senatorial rank and his appointment as a praetor in AD 20 was an unprecedented novelty. Claudius Drusus was ultimately never married to Aelia Junilla, who may have only been born in the year of their betrothal. According to Tacitus: Instead Suetonius said he had choked to death on a pear he had thrown into the air. According to him, Claudius Drusus;

Legacy Upon the death of his mother's brother Publius Plautius Pulcher during Claudius' reign, his funeral epitaph mentions that he was Drusus' uncle, possibly implying closeness between the two.