Explanation: After the assassination of the Roman Emperor Caligula, sometimes said to be mad, by the Praetorian Guard (nominally supposed to uh, protect the Emperor, but in this case they probably made the right call), the imperial government was in a state of disarray.

At this early point, the position of the Emperor was not really entirely certain, much less how the succession was supposed to go - Caligula was only the third Emperor ever, and the first Emperor who was openly assassinated/couped. So no one really knew what the next step was supposed to be. While the two bodyguards of the Emperor fought in the palace, the Senate argued about who should take power next and how, and many members of Caligula's court were executed on-the-spot in the frenzy, Caligula's uncle, Claudius, hid behind a curtain in the hopes of evading detection long enough for the chaos to die down!

Claudius had a limp, a stutter, and motor agitation when he was excited - for these reasons, he was sometimes seen as not just physically disabled, but also mentally disabled. His own mother regarded him as stupid, and hired a mule-driver to literally beat him as a child in hopes of 'correcting' him by 'discipline'.

All the same, when he was discovered by a Praetorian, Claudius panicked, thinking he was going to be executed, and begged for his life - to his surprise, the Praetorian instead immediately hailed him Emperor! Taking Claudius from cluster-to-cluster of scattered and confused Praetorians, Claudius was acclaimed Emperor before-and-by each of them, one of them noting positively that Claudius was the brother of the great (and beloved) general Germanicus, eventually taking him to the Praetorian encampment to protect him from attacks from pro-or-anti-Caligula partisans.

You see, Claudius was actually quite intelligent, a passionate scholar, and like many people with stutters, capable of giving speeches or recitations clearly, just not ordinary conversation. But during his nephew's bloody and paranoid reign, Claudius played up his disabilities and this perception of him in order to avoid Caligula's wrath - Claudius preferred to not be seen as a threat, to being a 'respectably' executed rival!

Once safe amongst the Praetorians, with his nephew dead, he composed carefully worded letters to the Senate requesting they acknowledge him as the next Emperor - promising to act in accordance with Roman law and custom, unlike the brutal and arbitrary Caligula. Claudius, for his part, also had significant support from the common people of the city of Rome, who gathered to call for him to restore order in the aftermath of the coup, and to call upon the Senate to invest him with the power necessary to do so.

The Senate, having STILL not come to an agreement even though they had been assembled while all this was going on for some three days, decided to acquiesce, and acknowledged Claudius's popular and Praetorian support, voting to make him the next Emperor.

Claudius would go on to be a very good (if imperfect) Emperor, a man of the people who paid great attention to economic and legal matters, implementing extensive reforms to 'rationalize' the power of the Imperial government within the structure of the Roman Republic and to widen the participation of provincials and non-Romans in the civic process. Curtain Man wins!