He undertook to assure to all free men of "long-haired" Gaul the same Roman privileges that were enjoyed by the inhabitants of Lyons; and amongst others, that of entering the senate of Rome and holding the great public offices.

He made a formal proposal to that effect to the senate, and succeeded, not without difficulty, in getting it adopted.
The speech that he delivered on this occasion has been to a great extent preserved to us, not only in the summary given by Tacitus, but also in an inscription on a bronze tablet, which split into many fragments at the time of the destruction of the building in which it was placed.

The two principal fragments were discovered at Lyons, in 1528, and they are now deposited in the Museum of that city.

They fully confirm the most equitable, and, it may be readily allowed, the most liberal act of policy that emanated from the earlier Roman emperors.

"Claudius had taken it into his head," says Seneca, "to see all Greeks, Gauls, Spaniards, and Britons clad in the toga." But at the same time he took great care to spread everywhere the Latin tongue, and to make it take the place of the different national idioms.