Product Description

Despised for his weakness and regarded by his family as little more than a stammering fool, the nobleman Claudius quietly survives the intrigues, bloody purges and mounting cruelty of the imperial Roman dynasties. In I, Claudius he watches from the sidelines to record the reigns of its emperors: from the wise Augustus and his villainous wife Livia to the sadistic Tiberius and the insane excesses of Caligula. Written in the form of Claudius’ autobiography, this is the first part of Robert Graves’s brilliant account of the madness and debauchery of ancient Rome, and stands as one of the most celebrated, gripping historical novels ever written.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12965 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

About the Author
Robert Ranke Graves (1895-1985) was a British poet, novelist, and critic. He is best known for the historical novel I, Claudius and the critical study of myth and poetry The White Goddess. He wrote his autobiography, Goodbye to All That, in 1929, and it was soon established as a modern classic. He also translated Apuleius, Lucan and Suetonius for the Penguin Classics, and compiled the first modern dictionary of Greek Mythology, The Greek Myths. His translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (with Omar Ali-Shah) is also published in Penguin. Barry Unsworth is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and holds an honorary doctorate from Manchester University. He is the author of 15 novels, among them ‘Sacred Hunger’, which won the 1992 Booker Prize. ‘Pascali’s Island’ (1980) and ‘Morality Play’ (1995) were shortlisted for the same prize. His most recent novel ‘The Ruby in Her Navel’ is due for publication in 2006. He lives in Italy.

Customer Reviews

"How many twisted stories still remain to be straightened out?"
Published in 1934, poet Robert Graves's _I, Claudius_ tells the story of Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, known in Roman history as Claudius--an historian, a crippled stutterer, and widely regarded as an idiot. Claudius is isolated from the treachery of the Roman court during the years immediately after the death of Christ, protected by the fact that no one takes him seriously enough to want to assassinate him. Ultimately, however, Claudius ascends to the throne of the Roman Empire in 41 A.D. and rules brilliantly until he is assassinated in 54 A.D.

Through the first person narrative of Claudius, Graves tells the story from the beginning of the Christian era until Claudius's death fifty years later, recording the horrors visited on the Roman people by his family's rulers. Claudius's grandmother Livia, widow of Caesar Augustus--and one of the most treacherous women in history--manipulates the imperial succession through poisonings, assassinations, marriages, and secret alliances. The reign of her son Tiberius is bloody, murderous, and corrupt. His brother, the good soldier Drusus, is kept in foreign lands until he can be assassinated. Tiberius's succession by Caligula, his grandson and the protégé of Livia, takes Rome into even more terrifying debauchery. Claudius's ultimate succession to the throne upon the death of Caligula, his insane nephew, is regarded as a joke by the court--the installation of an idiot who will not challenge the imperialists. Ironically, Claudius is discovered to be a republican.

This first person account, with virtually no scenes of direct action, defies the first rule of novel-writing: to recreate, not "tell about" actions. Here every aspect of Roman history is filtered through the mind of Claudius, who "tells about" all the action as he knows it. Claudius, however, is so perceptive and so full of fascinating information about the characters and their motivations, that the reader creates his/her own action scenes from the information revealed by Claudius. Through Claudius, whom the reader comes to admire, the reader is able to evaluate what is happening in ways that direct-action scenes, with all their superficial excitement, do not allow.

Characters are complex, fully developed humans, instead of cardboard, costumed "ancients," and their machinations, though extremely bloody, show the conflicts that occur when absolute rule and republican sentiments contend for dominance, a conflict in which Graves says he saw parallels to World War I and its aftermath. Giving a new view of Claudius from what had traditionally been accepted, Graves's portrayal is historically accurate (based on then-new information) and psychologically perceptive, a brilliant novel which sets the standard for historical fiction. Mary Whipple

Readable and compelling but not necessarily historically accurate
For so many people I, Claudius is THE novel about the first years of the Roman Empire and so has conditioned our whole reception of Rome and the rule of the emperors - and how Robert Graves would have laughed if he could have predicted that! Written as a 'pot-boiler' because he needed the cash, Graves deliberately fashions a decadent, immoral and corrupt milieu that has now passed into historical fact.

As a translator of Suetonius and Tacitus, two of the major sources he uses for his fictions, Graves is completely aware that both men had political agendas of their own when they chose to portray Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula etc in the way he did. Livia hardly gets a mention, along with the other imperial women, and Suetonius' portrait of Claudius himself is far less avuncular than Graves'.

Having said that, both this and the sequel Claudius the God are excellent novels: but just don't automatically assume they're also history because they're not.

History coming alive
"I, Claudius" and its sequel "Claudius the God" are definitely amongst the best books ever written on Imperial Rome, and quite probably amongst the best historical novels on any age or subject. No novelist could have devised a better plot than the actual events in those days, with fascinating characters such as Augustus, Livia, Germanicus, Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius himself, and an empireal court rife with intrigue and plotting, but I've never known it told better than Graves does.

It's a book that demands your full attention and concentration, just to keep track of the countless family ties, feuds and plots, but in fact that's part of the attraction. A breath-taking story, by a master storyteller who knows his subject matter extremely well!