I, Claudius

From Robert Graves, a civilizati.n-Itng historian, comes the very first book in the genre dubbed “historical fiction” - fiction based on real events. And let me tell you, despite being the first of its kind, this book is something else, not just as a tale, but as one of the most interesting glimpses into the Roman Empire.

From the top - if you have any interest in the history of Western Civilization, or if you just paid any attention in history class, you know of the Roman Empire. It set the basis for many of the neat things we enjoy nowadays, such as medicine, architecture, agriculture, and such. You might also know that Rome started as a small kingdom built on treachery (smooth move, Romulus), expanded into a Republic (they came up with the term too), until a small dude of no renown named Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and overthrew it (he was actually quite an important dude, the term “kaiser” comes straight from him). Then, he got assassinated in the Senate by a veritable bunch of amateurs people, intending to stop him from taking power for himself. It backfired, and Rome then became an Empire, with a bunch of Emperors taking over upon each others deaths and taking turns either bringing Rome to glory or mismanaging it to the ground, depending on personal whims, until the whole Empire happened to collapse due to quite a lot of problems.

This book consists of the fictional memoirs of Claudius, the fourth Emperor Rome ever had, and a rather good one, sandwiched between two absolutely awful ones. It begins with him quickly recounting the days after Caesar (Julius) got whacked and the chaos that came after, in which Octavian came out on top and crowned himself Emperor, dubbing himself Augustus (Caesar). Claudius spends a while recounting his family tree, and some interesting bits about Augustus, and, importantly, his wife Livia, who the book portrays as Augustus’ “man-behind-the-man”.

After the groundwork is done, Claudius narrates his own experience, starting with being a sickly child, born prematurely and malformed, who unlikely survived into boyhood and then adulthood. He is shunned by his family due to his deformities, and due to having a stammer which makes him look like a dimwit, with his grandmother Livia refusing to eat in his presence and even his mother using him as a reference for stupidity. He knows kindness only from his brother Germanicus, cousin Postumus (both extremely important later on), and some mentors he knows across his life, such as Athenodoros and Pollio.

Despite him being the narrator and the main character, the book then spends a whole lot of time away from him, focusing on the main events of the time, such as Tiberius and Drusus’ campaigns (there two are Livia’s children, adopted by Augustus as his own), while Augustus restores order at home. The book, as said, paints Livia as the true power behind Augustus, and a lot of the book consists of her intrigues - this woman was supposedly living her life like a Crusader Kings player, poisoning everybody left and right when things don’t go her way, scheming to keep her line in power and stopping the Republic from coming back (Augustus kept saying “it’ll come back when things are under control”, and kept saying it till his death, at which point the Empire had become a de-facto monarchy).

The body count soon surpasses A Song of Ice and Fire - George RR Martin was right, his books had nothing on real history. Everybody who crosses Livia soon finds himself whacked, exiled, intoxicated with aphrodisiacs until they become such degens that they are forcefully exiled (poor Julia…), or just plainly gets disgraced and forced into suicide (apparently a common enough fate back then). The marriages, who pines for whom, and the resulting children also become an absolute mess, and I mean this in the best way possible. After a legendary bunch of events involving Postumus (in which the author decides to blow the history books off and just make up his own story - and I say this in the best possible way) Augustus gets whacked himself and we move on to Tiberius.

Tiberius is no Augustus, but he’s an entertaining scoundrel nonetheless. He’s a poor grump who never moved on from a needlessly lost love. Most of his story is him playing tug-o-war with Livia for the power of the Emperor, and his relationship with the three angels over his shoulder - Nerva, a good guy who nonetheless never tried to steer Tiberius from his degen ways; Tharsyllus, the mage, who Tiberius (illegally) consults with to see his future; and Sejanus, the devil over his shoulder, and the most influential of the three, who stoked all of big T’s worst impulses and turned him into a nervous, assassination-fearing wreck. This Tiberius is supposedly an inspiration for George RR Martin’s Stannis Baratheon, but I for one don’t see it - Stannis, for all his grumpiness was an ultimately honorable man, while Tiberius seems to get worse and worse as he moves on, to the point where when he finally dies, the people don’t even want to let his “evil corpse” into the city, and the guards have to charge a mob to get him through.

In any case, with his death, we then get Caligula for Emperor, the spoiled son of Tiberius’ gigachad brother Germanicus. He proceeds to give us an absolute popcorn-worthy shitshow. But before that, let’s cover Claudius - for the titular character, he doesn’t seem to be doing much, does he? That’s kind of the point - ostracized by his family, dude mostly keeps to the background, where he can safely see all the very shady stuff his family is doing, without actively getting involved. He does have some involvements here and there - helps out Germanicus put out a rebellion by paying for some emergency wages out of his own pocket, helps out Postumus when he gets a false accusation, and so on. Yet a pervasive theme in his own story is that he is advised by wise people to keep a low profile and do nothing of note to bring attention to himself until all the bad apples are dead.

Speaking of bad apples, back to Caligula - dude was spoiled beyond rotten as a child (his name means “little boot”, an affectionate nickname given him by the soldiers he grew up with), and let that get to his head. He starts off well enough - being generous to a bunch of people, paying back Claudius for the previously mentioned huge expense, and having the people’s support and admiration. And then the megalomania starts. Dude starts believing himself to be an actual god, and announces that to the authentic frat house he and his pals had made of the Imperial Palace. By this point, poor Claudius has been forcibly moved in with them, where he’s the butt of every joke.

And what jokesters Caligula and his pals are - one particularly lurid episode has Caligula’s sisters whoring themselves out to the Senate in one massive party. In another episode, Caligula has a ton of ships lined up and juryrigged into a bridge of sorts so he can “walk on water”. In another, there’s his famous “attack on Poseidon”, which sees him ordering his army to attack the sea and take a ton of seashells as plunder for their “victory”. He also routinely plays pranks on a particular gigachad of a Centurion, who has all sorts of epic feats under his belt - Caligula never passes up a chance to take cheap shots at him. Dude’s name is Cassius - remember him for later.

In any case, while Caligula’s stupid antics at first made him popular, there’s only so many lavish events the people can take before they start getting complacent, bored, and start to have enough of your antics. Caligula reached the limit in record time and he started losing his appeal to the masses at the same pace. They start catching on to his shadier antics - like the fact that he has inherited his great-uncle Tiberius’ nasty network of informants and routinely clamps down on rich citizens to get their money for himself. Or the fact that he often has people killed for small or even imaginary slights. Or the fact that he’s not at all the model of a Roman citizen, being effeminate, cowardly, vain, and regularly performs ludicrous parts in silly plays. Before long, he is widely despised and hated by the populace, and plots starts forming against him, led by none other than Cassius, who has grown tired of Caligula’s pranks.

In one fateful day in a fateful game event, the plot kicks off and Cassius and a bunch of angry Senators pull the trigger, ice Caligula and tear him apart. In the absolute mess that follows, with the German forces at the games (the only who support Caligula still at this point) going on a rampage, while everyone else cheers his death to varying degrees. In the mess, Claudius is found by some guards hiding behind some curtains, and gets pronounced the next Emperor. And then, while he ponders on his reluctanly acquired title, the book ends. A bit abrupt, sure but the right note to end on, I guess.

I greatly enjoyed my time with this book. It has made me care more about History than dozens of boring, mindnumbing classes, and I learned more here than in all those classes put together. A few things stick out - Claudius’ repeated statement that in Rome, the crabs outweigh the apples, which is the ultimate cause of its decline. Dude turns out to be correct - while things start off well with Augustus, it goes steadily downhill as soon as the degen Tiberius takes charge. And once Caligula does, oh boy, things fly off the rails.

It’s staggering how people just played along with the shitshow, barring the select few who actually did something about it. That could also be seen earlier in the book, as Sejanus played the devil over Tiberius’ shoulders, corrupting the volatile man until he himself was de facto man in charge. As he does, you can gradually see how men in honourable positions get moved out and worthless, inneffective cronies, or downright malevolent assholes get placed in charge. Innocent men are informed on for utterly baseless charges, and citizens end up having to pay their own guards protection money. Germanicus is the prime example here - one of the most honourable men in the whole story, his death is among the most disturbing in how bizarre, inexplicable and ultimately needless it is. With him dies some of the last of Rome’s honor and you feel it. Yet in the process of deposing Sejanus, even greater evil ends up being committed, with his family also being executed in heinous ways.

I liked Claudius’ background in this. Despite this being his story, his own screentime is minimal, yet whenever the action does shift to him, it’s always entertaining. The way how he always seems to have a great part to play in keeping the Empire running, yet never gets any credit reminded me of Tyrion Lannister, yet more honorable and compelling. His story with Urgulanilla, particularly the end of that stormy relationship, was darkly hilarious. The way how he gets reluctantly thrust into power also made me cackle, dragged kicking and screaming into the most powerful position in the Empire while shouting his support for the Republic.

If I had to point out something that rubbed me the wrong way, it would be two things. First, “I, Claudius” ends right when it seems his real life as Emperor, the life we know him for, which seems endlessly more relevant than this whole skulking-in-the-background business, fun as it was. Second, it would be the… libertarian way in which this approaches history. It presents many things which, to the best of my knowledge, are very much up in doubt, such as whether or not Livia poisoned Augustus, and the whole bit about Postumus which seems to have been wholy made up the the author. Beyond that though, I loved this book to bits. Will be taking some time reading other shorter things before jumping to the second part, “Claudius the God”.