As the grand-nephew of Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, he witnesses Augustus's vacillation, early on promising to restore the Republic, a promise that of course will never be fulfilled. Of course, this story is told from his own perspective, so it's unsurprising that he comes off looking better, despite his humility. He was also much more humane and stable and less egotistical than most of his relatives. I started this book just wanting to see how the classic was (I only knew of it as an old BBC serial), and it was really good.Ĭlaudius, contrary to what most everyone around him believed, was in fact a very intelligent, educated, and thoughtful man. They installed him as Emperor, and that's how I, Claudius ends. The joke was on them when, after Caligula's Praetorian guard had had enough and finally offed him, Claudius was the only (seemingly) pliable Roman of noble blood around.

So he was witness to the rise and fall of many a senator and would-be emperor, and while bodies fell around him, nobody ever quite got around to killing him off. In the era in which he grew up among the Roman nobility, this likely saved him - while everyone was jockeying for position and trying to position themselves or their heirs for the throne, nobody considered 'Lame Uncle Claudius' a threat. Everyone assumed this meant he was also feeble-witted and useless. In general the historical details seem to fit what I was able to glean about him, though obviously the words, thoughts and specific day to day events that Graves attributes to him are fictional.Ĭlaudius was lame, sickly, and a stutterer. I, Claudius, being one of the earliest popular modern historicals, tells the story of the Roman Emperor Claudius, with Claudius as the first-person narrator of his own biography. I find Roman history interesting, like most ancient history, but I have never really studied it, so I don't know how accurate Robert Graves' famous set of novels is.

Filled with poisonings, betrayal, and shocking excesses, I Claudius is history that rivals the most exciting contemporary fiction. Lame, stammering Claudius, once a major embarrassment to the imperial family and now emperor of Rome, writes an eyewitness account of the reign of the first four Caesars: the noble Augustus and his cunning wife, Livia the reptilian Tiberius the monstrous Caligula and finally old Claudius himself and his wife, Messalina. Here is one of the best historical novels ever written.

I claudius novel