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What is one to do when all around are the menaces of manipulation and murder? If you are Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, you keep your head down, stay out of the way, and write a scorching history about it. Such is the tale of Robert Grave’s classic I, Claudius, a book that was a major inspiration for George R.R. Martin (it shows) and will surprise nobody to learn is the , the writer of the hit TV show (reading about G’ma Livia murdering and manipulating everyone in Rome makes you realize where Livia Soprano got her name). But, I gotta say, this was a hell of a book to be reading right when a social media trend showing that and found myself being asked at random how often I thought of the Romans and replying ”well pretty much constantly lately...why you ask?��

But you know who else was thinking about the Roman Empire a lot? Tiberius Claudius Drusu...okay you can call him Claudius for short. Though if you were to ask around Rome you’d find he was more ��known to my friends and relatives and associates as Claudius the Idiot', or "That Claudius', or 'Claudius the Stammerer', or 'Clau-Clau-Claudius', or at best as ‘Poor Uncle Claudius',�� Nobody liked him or took him seriously—even his own mother said he was ��too stupid�� to love—but being ignored and undervalued can come in handy when anyone with even the hint of desire for power finds themselves poisoned or at the very least plotted against.

We can read this as an underdog tale in a way, and it makes for excellent historical fiction—so much so that it made list. Not bad for a book the author claims he to pay off a debt and broke into two volumes due to strict deadlines. Dense, yet rather readable with plenty of intrigue launching us into a deadly game of power struggles, I, Claudius also has some excellent humor and self-awareness that make for an all-around great read that will completely consume you. Just don’t consume the poisoned figs��

��He's as stupid as a donkey - what am I saying? Donkeys are sensible beings by comparison - he's as stupid as ... as ... Heavens, he's as stupid as my son Claudius!��
Aww, little buddy Claudius, don’t take it too badly, you’ll be Emperor one day.

I’ll admit that this book took me a bit to get into the groove. It starts pretty slow and covers a LOT of history without making all that much forward progress to where I thought I’d read non-fiction with more bite and excitement to it. I am GLAD I read on because once this picks up it is a relentless stream of people ruining each other’s day and becomes quite the wild ride. Plus we get Caligula being Caligula, and after having read Camus�� amazing play about him, I was quite happy to read about him some more. At the center of this all is Claudius who is guided by historians Livy and Pollio to play the fool to stay alive and pursue the life of a historian. As anyone with knowledge of the Roman Empire knows, Claudius will one day become Emperor (his time as ruler is covered in the second book, Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina), something that is as baffling to Claudius even in the face of prophecy as it is to anyone around him. Though if he becomes Emperor ��at least I'll be able to make people read my books now.�� So, win win I guess.

��Augustus ruled the world, but Livia ruled Augustus.��
Much of the novel involves the long plotting of Livia, wife of Augustus, to ensure her lineage takes the throne and manipulating Augustus to get what she wants. Cross Livia and cross over to the land of the dead. Or get accused of horrible crimes, be exiled to an island, eventually freed, and THEN get dead. She can wait, she will get you. ��Livia: a blight upon the nation as a mother, a blight upon the house of Caesar as a stepmother�� wrote Roman historian Tacitus, and so began the stories of Empress Livia the great villain and serial poisoner, an angle that Claudius is all too happy to represent here. Claudius begins this book asserting he will be true to the facts, even at the expense of his own family members and will not leave out any details. And so we get a brutal account where almost nobody goes unscathed under Claudius�� watchful eye which, due to his status of being a fool, grants him a lot of access to the goings-on. But for real, every time he shows up someone is all ‘ah hell not that dipshit again,�� so you can’t really blame him for raking them over the coals of canonized history.
��There are two different ways of writing history: one is to persuade men to virtue and the other is to compel men to truth.��

Perhaps my favorite aspect of the book is how self-aware it is. There are the metafictional aspects that the book you hold in your hand is supposed to quite literally be written by Claudius in a dialect he assumed would be more readable for future generations—he is given a prophecy at the start that gives the publication year of Graves�� novel as the date when his words will be discovered—and declares he will leave the manuscript somewhere it can be easily found. ��For my experience as a historian is that more documents survive by chance than by intention.�� But most interesting is the way the novel frequently discusses issues of writing history, both as fact or fiction. Take Pollio’s statement for instance:

��He has you there, Livy, on your weakest spot. You credit the Romans of seven centuries ago with impossibly modern motives and habits and speeches. Yes, it’s readable all right, but it’s not history.��

This fallacy of “�� often mars historical fiction or commentary. One might wonder if, by giving that a shoutout, Graves felt he could sneak in a few of the slights against Germans that appear in the novel, him fresh out of WWI and all, such as when Claudius writes ��Never trust a German out of your sight, but never be afraid of him when you have him face to face.�� Graves can be forgiven for historical errors, as he is not trying to pass it off as history but openly writing a novel. But historians have to be much more careful, as the discussion between Pollio and Livy shows, with Claudius picking Pollio as his model for Pollio’s ��accuracy and diligence.��

��But there’s also a serious matter in question and that is, the proper writing of history. It may be that I have made mistakes. What historian is free from them? I have not, at least, told deliberate falsehoods: you’ll not accuse me of that. Any legendary episode from early historical writings which bears on my theme of the ancient greatness of Rome I gladly incorporate in the story: though it may not be true in factual detail, it is true in spirit. If I come across two versions of the same episode I choose the one nearest my theme, and you won’t find me grubbing around Etruscan cemeteries in search of any third account which may flatly contradict both �� what good would that do?��

“It would serve the cause of the truth,�� said Pollio gently. “Wouldn’t that be something?��

“And if by serving the cause of truth we admit our revered ancestors to have been cowards, liars and traitors? What then?��

I’ll leave this boy to answer the question. He’s just starting in life. Come on, boy, answer it!��

Now, one might question how accurate (within the fictional world of Graves) Claudius truly is? Is he trying to vilify Livia more than necessary, why does he spout off about Cato the Censor, what private grudges make their way into the pages to become history the way he saw it? I found all this a rather clever and fun texturing to the novel, one Graves no doubt was aware plays with history in a way that would probably trick less discerning readers into assuming it was factual, the truth and fiction so tightly blended.
So if intrigue and murder are your thing, or if you find yourself thinking about the Roman Empire more than most would expect, I, Claudius is a book for you. Honestly, I wouldn’t have thought it was one for me, but that's why I love having a book club because I end up reading books I would have never picked up on my own and end up really enjoying them. This is quite the wild ride of historical fiction through the history of Roman emperors and Graves can certainly write with such intelligence and engagement that was hard to put down. Just don’t piss off Livia.

4/5