[Elucidation on a dystonic emperor].

Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus (10 BC.-54 DC.) governed the Roman empire for 14 years, being popularly known as Claudium, the <<stuttering>> and <<lame>> emperor. Most of the works published on his health coincide that the cause of his sufferings was an infant Athetoid cerebral palsy. However, the reading of the classics (Suetonius, Dion Cassius, Seneca and Tacitus) manifests the existence of some symptoms such as hypoacusis, recurrent abdominal pain, sleep disorders and probable myopathy that could not only be explained by this clinical picture. The analysis of all the vegetative symptoms, presence of pathological family history and the possibility of a progressive course of his cognitive disorder makes it possible to suggest the hypothesis of a mitochondrial cytopathic type multisystemic disease as an etiological alternative.