I, Claudius has been responsible in my recent binge in watching all the YouTube videos about the Roman Emperors. Let’s be honest here, unless we’re history buffs, we all have a superficial understanding of what happened in Ancient Rome. We know it was an ugly place full of crazy emperors who offed anybody that might slightly offend them, midgets fighting lions in the Colosseum, and oversexed senators with togas doing all sorts of weird things to young boys. All of these is true and more, but Ancient Rome as portrayed in I, Claudius is far more interesting than I imagined it to be.
Claudius is one of the most understated out of all the Roman Emperors. To judge by the history books, his rule is regarded as benevolent, fruitful and innovative. He was the guy who managed to annex Britannia, taking a bunch of elephants with him along the way. He also introduced many administrative changes which was groundbreaking at the time — such as forming a cabinet of former slaves to help in the administration of the city. But let’s not go there just yet, because the book covers none of these things.
Claudius, pretty much stumbling upon the emperorship of Ancient Rome, was not an august figure as his grandfather was. He survived three emperors before becoming one himself, but for a brunt of his life, he was the village idiot in the tribe — being a stutterer, feeble-looking, unassertive and perceived as mentally retarded. But as the book shows, his faculties are all there.
I, Claudius only covers the events leading up to his betrothal as Emperor. The rest of the book is not so much him but his super duper dysfunctional family that beats any beer drinking inbred trailer trash families in Jerry Springer. Most of these guys were major dicks. The worst of the matter is that the simple choices they make had huge reverberations in history. We only see the family façade from the outside, and gloss over the ugly swindles that happen, but Time makes good for everything even history.
Claudius’s grandfather, Augustus is the most reputable out of all the Roman Emperors. We have a whole month named after the guy after all, so he couldn’t be half bad. But the book doesn’t cover his achievements and instead portrayed him as a proxy puppet to his wife, the ballbreaker Livia. If the events in the books were true (which is very open to interpretation), then Nonna Livia is probably one of the most influential individual in history who’s not widely known. Augustus was busy as an emperor, but Livia was busier still — she held the keys to the kingdom and her longevity was assured because of this knowledge.
But her methods to attain this power is beyond cruel, and the figures in history who had perished under her scheming and her poison are too countless to retell. Her spy network in the kingdom makes the CIA look like a high school student’s first time trying to Photoshop. Livia, it seems, take an enjoyment when offing the people who undermined her power. She is a sadist in a way, such as the time when she forced married Claudius to the huuuuge bitch Urgulanilla, and laughing at this odd couple in their wedding, forcing them to make out as well, ew. She is the most loathsome woman in literature, and perhaps, history.
There are remarkable characters in this story who you would be attached to, and admire because of their integrity. Men who deserved to be emperors but somehow didn’t. The more you read about these men, the more you dread to hear what happens to them. We have never heard of Emperor Germanicus, let alone Emperor Postumus, but these men were important men who swayed the tides of war to Rome and won the respect of their military peers because of their integrity. I, Claudius is a lovesong to these men who could have become emperors and leave their mark but fell short.
Instead, Rome ended up with men such as Tiberius and Caligula. Tiberius — though not incompetent, was protected by his extreme paranoia to the point that he murdered those he suspected were against him, punishing them through a kangaroo court and in many cases, just outright killing them. Caligula was initially loved by the people, as he spent excessively to entertain himself and the Romans, but this was not a sustainable way to rule. He blamed the Christians for many of the empire’s fall from grace and punished them by throwing them to the Colosseum.
In the midst of all this, Claudius sat in the background, imperceptibly, unassumingly. He had no illusions other than his Etruscan histories and ancient linguistics. Historians who mentored him knew better — that he was articulate in his mind, and that his pretence of weakness was his strongest defence when everybody around him were dropping off like flies. Where the world is divided between the givers and takers, Claudius played no part in it — He is the actor playing the tree in the community theatre production of As You Like It.
Funnily enough, I have just finished reading Adam Grant’s Give or Take, where he argued that those who give will benefit in the long run, as value is added for all, and the giver’s reputation is bolstered when everybody in his network benefits. Not so much in Ancient Rome. It is a Machiavellian place where those who deserve to become emperors are dethrone miles before they reach the red carpet leading up to it. Much of these much loved figures were heroes of the people, and much of those who put their bums on the throne are greatly disliked. The takers are the victors here — the Livia and Tiberius. They do not deserve their longevity.
It strikes me how similar Ancient Rome is to the world we live in now. They have systems in place to keep their class systems entrenched. The elites will remain elite, and the slaves even though they can earn their freedom will hit a glass ceiling at some stage, to graduate as paid slaves. The judicial systems are used to determine the outcome of crimes, as we do now, though most of these trials by emperors are really kangaroo courts. The historians at that time still refer to historians of the past, much of what we do now. People still thirst for entertainment to distract themselves from the reality of their lives — it is as much an anaesthetic then as it is now.
I’ve never really liked how Graves wrote. Although his prose is easy to read and flows well, there is something that does not sit right with me in how he writes. I think it was the remnants of reading Goodbye to All That, which I thought was a self-centred piece work. The tone is much the same here. He might as well have called the book I, Robert Graves, as he saw parallels between his life and that of Claudius. I have rated this book highly because it exposed to me how wild and turbulent and above all, interesting this time of history was. Though I have more books to read in my shelf, I can see myself reading a book about Ancient Rome before the year is done.
