Claudius the God

Claudius the God
by Robert Graves
read: 2016

Claudius the God continues the real-life Game-of-Thrones story of I, Claudius, but there's a bit of a tonal shift. Graves' Claudius shows a knack for leadership and public service, but he also plays the comic fool sometimes, especially oblivious to his wife Messalina's infidelities and manipulations. Claudius' relationship with Herod, a major element on the story, also has comic touches.

Throughout the two Claudius novels, the protagonist (and narrator) comes across as sympathetic, while the women of the tale - Messalina, Aggripina, and Lydia, especially - take the blame for many of the evil done in men's names. Graves' work is apparently based on historical information, but I wonder how many of those historical takes are based on outdated notions of a woman's proper place. The idea that Claudius ultimately becomes a tyrant to unselfishly hasten the fall of the empire and the rise of a republican form of government is a bridge too far, for me at least.

I, Claudius

I, Claudius
by Robert Graves
read: 2014
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #14, James Tait Black Prize

It's hard to read Graves' characterization of Caligula and not think George R. R. Martin drew from it heavily in his depiction of King Joffrey. The two share their young age, cruelty, and inflated sense of importance. A Song of Ice and Fire owes a lot from I, Claudius - the story brims with plots and conspiracies, assassinations, strategic marriages, affairs, incest, murder, war, and intrigue. It was a lot more fun and readable than I expected a book that's 80 years old (and is written about things happening 2000 years ago) to be.

There are some interesting meta-textual elements to the novel. The story is written as autobiography. Claudius writes:

This is a confidential history. but who, it may be asked, are my confidants? My answer is: it is addressed to posterity.

There's an early argument between historians Pollio and Livy about the proper way to write history. Pollio holds the truth above all else, eschewing the easy or dramatic narrative for the way things really happened. Livy is willing to take more poetic license, saying, "If I come across two versions of the same episode I choose the one nearest my theme." The young Claudius sides with Pollio, yet I, Claudius is written in Livy's style. This is explained late in the story, with the idea that Claudius gains access to the empire's "secret archives." "Even the mature historian's privilege of setting forth conversations of which he knows only the gist is one that I have availed myself of hardly at all." Is Graves winking at us here?