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This is the third time I have read this book. There are few I have read so many times. But this book and its sequels formed the groundwork for my understanding of classical Roman times, at least of its Empire. I first read this when I was very young but even if my main concern then was to decipher the English it left its roots for my understanding of everything Roman and a positive taste for historical fiction. The second time I concentrated on learning the genealogical tree of the Claudians. This time I have concentrated on the way Graves builds a logical development of events.

The book spans roughly sixty years: from around 25 BC � [when Augustus had been Emperor for a while and his sister Octavia and his friend Agrippa are still alive, so before 11BC] � until Caligula’s death in 40 AD. Reading it, and particularly watching the BBC serial in parallel, it seems the span of time is shorter, considering how fast events unfold. The plot of the novel can be understood as an obstacle race. How many lives had to be ended so that Augustus would be succeeded by his unbeloved stepson Tiberius? These were eight, and in this order: 1. Marcellus (Augustus� nephew � dead in 23BC), 2. Agrippa (his close and trusted friend, partner and son in law � dead in 12BC), 3. Drusus (stepson � gone in 9BC), 4. Julia (daughter � banned in 2BC), 5. Lucius (grandson and son of Julia’s � done for in 2AD), 6. Gaius (grandson and brother to Gaius � perished in 4AD), 7. Postumus (grandson and brother to Lucius and Gaius � exiled in 6AD and dead in 14AD), 8. And finally Augustus’s own life also in 14AD.

This succession, if surveyed fast, seems like the Claudians were playing the Russian roulette.

So Graves� main proposition is that all these deaths were not really random, but the result of a sustained, purposeful, resourceful, astute planning. And the executor of this plan was Livia, Augustus’s wife. She was the one who kept turning around the roulette of destiny dissolving those obstacles with poison. And was this an act of love? Love for her son Tiberius? Not really, for remember that number 3 above, Drusus, was also her son. What was at stake was something else.

For Tiberius was not particularly fond of his mother either. So, why did Livia push her ambition to the keep her family in power at the expense of exterminating several of its members included her husband whom she did love? Her own ambition? Partly. Tiberius was a better candidate than Drusus because she could manipulate the former; he was scared of her and was insecure. She would rule through him for fifteen more years after Augustus death, until her own death in 29AD.

Graves is devising a plot and a directing thread to his novel is not just offering us a soap opera. There is a political interpretation too. For us it is now almost indisputable that the Empire would follow the Roman republic for several centuries. But in Livia’s time it was not. The peace enjoyed under Augustus had been welcomed with such relief by those who had lived through the civil wars was still very much associated with him. If he went, so would the peace and prosperity of all. And this is what Livia tried to preserve and for her only through an Empire, with a firm an unquestioned centralization of power under one man (yes, there was that Senate, but one could always go around it), could this be achieved. Based on this premise, that Livia was the true artificer of a lasting Empire, Graves presents Livia’s poisoning of her husband as the last necessary measure to preserve the Empire, since Augustus himself entertained doubts about reestablishing the Republic.

Her hand is therefore also felt once her son rules and the roulette continues turning around, but it gradually loses its political purpose, becoming a circus when her grandson Caligula takes on the eagle. Livia’s peace of mind and forgiveness for all her sins could only come were she to enter the Olympus as a goddess. Her plan failed at the end because her understanding of Empire did not consider how easily it could degenerate into a Despot-system and her own descendant decided that she could rot in Hell.

In this third read then I have tried to track the way Graves imposes some sense, thanks to human intention, onto a set of incomprehensible events in history. Underlying this we have the proposition of human will versus the randomess of destiny.

Soon, I will continue with Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina and follow how Graves produces and order in the events of history.