In his marriage, as in all else, Claudius had been pre-eminent in misfortune.
He lived in an age of which the most frightful sign of depravity was that its women were, if possible, a shade worse than its men; and it was the misery of Claudius, as it finally proved his ruin, to have been united by marriage to the very worst among them all.

Princesses like the Berenice, and the Drusilla, and the Salome, and the Herodias of the sacred historians were in this age a familiar spectacle; but none of them were so wicked as two at least of Claudius's wives.

He was betrothed or married no less than five times.

The lady first destined for his bride had been repudiated because her parents had offended Augustus; the next died on the very day intended for her nuptials.

By his first actual wife, Urgulania, whom he had married in early youth, he had two children, Drusus and Claudia; Drusus was accidentally choked in boyhood while trying to swallow a pear which had been thrown up into the air.