Product Description

Claudius has survived the murderous intrigues of his predecessors to become, reluctantly, Emperor of Rome. Here he recounts his surprisingly successful reign: how he cultivates the loyalty of the army and the common people to repair the damage caused by Caligula; his relations with the Jewish King Herod Agrippa; and his invasion of Britain. But the growing paranoia of absolute power and the infidelity of his promiscuous young wife Messalina mean that his good fortune will not last forever. In this second part of Robert Graves’s fictionalized autobiography, Claudius - wry, rueful, always inquisitive - brings to life some of the most scandalous and violent times in history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43485 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 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

More diverse than I, Claudius
This is the second volume of Graves' fictional autobiography of the emperor Claudius, and, in some ways, the more interesting for being far less well-known.

Claudius has become emperor against his will, and now recounts the story of his reign: the roman engagement with the middle east in the figure of Herod Agrippa; the second (and successful) invasion of Britain; the re-establishment of some kind of order after the mad predations of Caligula. But all is not well in Claudius' 'happy' marriage to the depraved and decadent Messalina, and, when Claudius discovers the truth about her, he is so disillusioned that he withdraws from active engagement from life and leaves Rome in the hands of his murderous nephew, Nero.

As with the first volume, Graves has fun here with the historical sources (principally Suetonius and Tacitus) and interprets them fictionally to make a compelling and psychologically astute novel. However, this isn't history but fiction, and paints a very different picture of Claudius from the one more generally accepted now by classicists working in this field.

Fantastic stuff
Coming after the incredibly good novel "I, Claudius", this second part describes the actual reign of Claudius until his death AD54. There may be some controversy about how much is fact and how much is fiction (Graves himself claimed everything is based on ample contemporary and later sources, and he says in the foreword 'few incidents here given are wholly unsupported by historical authority of some sort') but in fact that's besides the point. This is if nothing else a fabulous re-telling of one of the most influential and fascinating periods in Western history.

More importantly, it's also a riveting story with powerful insights into the nature and influence of power, ambition versus decency, etc. etc. so even if you couldn't care less about Rome it's still a great read.

My God, nothing at all like the TV Series, and far more boring for it.
I, Claudius was fine. I liked I, Claudius; its mix of soap opera and real history so skillfully ripped from Suetonius's "Life of the Twelve Caesars" makes it a cracking good read. So naturally i was expecting about the same calibre from this.
Trouble is, it turns out to be either a supremely skilled satire, a veiled attack on his (Graves') publishers (he supposedly wrote his miniseries on the stuttering emperor for the money), or just boring.
Typically, you would want the book to start off straight after the events which concluded the last book. It takes a quarter of the book to get to there, the intervening period being filled with a small biography on Claudius's friend Herod Agrippa. An introduction is fine; the biography inside the book however could be published on its own merit, but nevertheless is almost totally irrelevent to the plot.
When it comes to the actual story line again, Claudius then goes on ceaselessly about reforms, or "how i alone conquered Britain", or fiddling with trade monopolies. This is not the stuff gripping dramas are made out of; i can see know why I, Claudius the series missed out all of this crap and only made around 4 episodes out of the book, compared to the other eight the previous one managed. Some of these descriptions are vaguely interesting, and thread into the plot , but only after sixty pages on riots in Alexandria, and by that time your exhausted.
But i may be missing the point. As a work of literature alone this is a boring bundle of paper that deserves to be thrown onto the fire. As a satire on Roman autobiographies, that needs to be said; it is only in the course of writing this review that i have realised this, and others will most likely go for my former expierience (i didnt actually throw it onto the fire, but gave up 3/4 of the way through). As a veiled attack on his publishers, that is a fine achievement; writing a whole book that is boring beyond belief must have tested Graves.
Overall i dislike this book. There is hardly any drama, and where there is its bookended with crap about trade deficits in Rome, senatorial expenditure and military campaigns which bear no relevance to the piece unless as a full assesment of the subject. It is not worth it to read it as purely a satire on Roman autobiographies; from the histories we know (as most likely Graves did) that the Emperor Claudius was a twitchy psychopath at heart, as were all but two of the later Julio-Claudian line. So, unless your as boring as hell, dont read this book; its a monumental waste of time, with no comparison to its sister book.