I just finished watching the BBC miniseries I, Claudius. Very entertaining. I figured I’d read the book, too…I’m glad I watched the miniseries first, or I’d never be able to keep track of all the names and people.
But a question has been plaguing me…where does this come from? Is it a total work of fiction? Or is it accurate at all? I see there is a bibliography in the back of the book, but I don’t want to read a bunch of other books to determine the accuracy of this one. I’d really like a sort of primer: these are the things that are true, these are conjecture, these are out of thin air. Is there a link somewhere?
Spoilers ahead.
For example, I read here and there that Livia’s poisonings and murders are highly conjecture, yet in the book they’re treated as fact.
Also Caligula sleeping with his sister, making a horse a senator, this is all either considered overexaggerations or jokes, but again in the miniseries at least they’re treated as gospel. Haven’t got far enough in the book yet to tell you, as I’m only up to the beginning of Tiberius’ reign.
More to the point, where did Graves come up with this? And is the sequel…I forget the name right now, Claudius something-or-other, worth reading?
Of course other people’s thoughts are welcome. And I love BBC. The miniseries took its time and didn’t rush through anything, and most of the acting was quite good. (Patrick Stewart!)
Robert Graves based most of it on Suetonius, “The Twelve Caesars.” (This is roughly the equivalent of the tabloid press, without the restraint.) He also used other sources; letters, speeches, etc. But he cherry picked the juicy stuff, and didn’t particularly try to be balanced. (He was writing a novel, not history.) Generally, the public events - wars, revolutions, marriages - are accurate, and the private events - affairs, emotional connections, poisonings - aren’t.
Graves based things pretty heavily off of Suetonius’ The lives of the Twelve Caesars, which was not particularly friendly to its subjects.
If in the far distant future the only knowledge of turn of the 21st century America came from Kitty Kelly biographies you would probably end up with a similar view of our leaders and what sorts of things transpired.
See here for more - http://www.historyinfilm.com/claudius/
The sequel is Claudius the God. The TV series is based on both books - IIRC the first book ends when Claudius is declared Emperor by the Praetorian Guard. Worth the read as well.
On the accuracy meter, I’d rank it far above The Crucible or Amadeus (which used the Salem Witchcraft trials/life of Salieri as settings for plays that were really about something else and as such didn’t particularly care about historical accuracy) and below Warm Springs or The Aviator, which took dramatic liberties with the lives of the main characters but remain substantively true. With any ancient figure you have to fill in a lot of blanks as there was no such thing (probably not even a concept) of an objective scholarly biography of Roman emperors until long after the empire was dust. Historians usually had an agenda, and if they didn’t it’s amazing how much the knowledge that the current emperor can have you tortured and executed can factor into your research and conclusions (i.e. probably not a good idea to rave about how great Caligula or Tiberius was when the current emperor wants to be portrayed as a vast improvement over the Julio-Claudian dynasty). I think that’s why Graves, a poet first and novelist second and romantic all around, loved the era: there was enough known about the characters to provide a skeleton but reconstructing the flesh and features was wide open.
It’s historical fiction in the true sense- real history mixed with real fiction about real characters. I doubt that Graves was particularly concerned with whether his Claudius was accurate to the real one (which can never be known) as much as he was concerned with whether he was a great character (which he was). The real Livia probably wasn’t as brilliant or as bloody, the real Claudius probably wasn’t as idealistic or naive or nice, the real Messalina probably wasn’t as blatantly promiscuous and evil (I find the contest with the whores [an echo of something also reported about Julia] to be just a bit on the unbelievable side, something probably trumped up soon after her death]), and if it were a work of history I’d give it a D at best, but I have no problem giving it an A as a series of novels. (Colleen McCullough’s Rome series is probably a little more accurate but nowhere near as gripping.)
There’s a post-swcript to Graves’ book in which he listed some of his sources. He was apparently fed up with people who thought he ripped it all off from Suetonius. Graves knew better than to do that. On the other hand, he certainly did have his own agendas, whether writing about Claudius or Jesus or Greek Myths or Hebrew Myths. And just try wading through The White Goddess. Of course, in his historical fiction there’s no reason he shouldn’t have his own opinionsd and odd ideas.
Was Claudius mentally impaired, or was it an act, or something between the two? Who knows? But it makes a good story, and it sticks pretty close to the known facts.
in the preface to his second volume Graves complains that some critics had observed that he had merely combined Suetonius and Tacitus’ Annales with his own ‘vigorous fancy’ and protests that many more authors were consulted and that virtually all assertions in the book had at least some authority for them.
Suetonius is the tabloid journalism of his day; racy, anecdotal, overly credulous in signs and portents, broken down into easily digestible chunks, and still highly readable. His other works, now lost, included Illustrious Writers, Royal Biographies and Lives of Famous Whores. Tacitus is dryer, usually more reliable, though not free from bias for all his protestations. Large lacunae prevent us from evaluating the whole of his work
Thank you all. And yes, it is a great story, and I will definitely try Claudius, the God.
Oh. I will have to see if my book does, I honestly didn’t notice. I’m about halfway through. For history, as **Sampiro ** says, it’s remarkably interesting, and I can see why he left in stuff that was untrue or unproven.
How about the prophecies? Were any of those “real”? When I say real, I mean, were they really prophecies of the time, not necessarily created before the events.
I had another thought, but it slipped away in the middle of my work.
If you mean the poem “son, no son…wife, no wife…horse, no horse” etc., I think that Graves made it up. He was an excellent poet, by the way, you might enjoy some of his poetry. He wrote a several volume autobiography that is good reading, and one of his nephews wrote a biography of him as well. (I’m sure there are others available, but I read that one.)
Oh, did he? Because I did love that poem, but it was kind of :dubious: how it seemingly fit all the circumstances! But I love a good yarn as much as anyone.
The edition I have is a later one and has a forward written by Graves in the '60s in which he has a well phrased mini-rant about that. He also mentions one particularly peeved pedantic historian who actually published a long treatise outlinine ONE THOUSAND historical inaccuracies (some of them just absolutely “get a freaking life” in their tininess [e.g. he refers to the name of a demi-goddess by her Persian rather than Roman name, or refers to a poison by its medieval rather than ancient name and other nonsense like that]).
It’s still vastly entertaining and there’s a reason that Graves is a much more famous name to scholars and laiety than the name of the guy who wrote the critique. I wish I could find an inexpensive copy of his novel about Belisarius as that’s a period of history whose historians need no embellishing (they were positively graphic novelists) and I’d love to see what Graves did with it.
Graves is definitely going for dramatic effect in his novel. Having Livia be behind the murder of every damn body in ancient Rome is overstating her power and influence a bit.
The biggest mistake I’ve noticed is Graves’ identification of ‘Ganymede’ with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Caligula’s cousin. The Marcus Aemilius Lepidus who was married to Drusilla and was a lover of Caligula, only to be executed by him, was NOT the same as Julilla’s son. This was one of Graves’ slip-ups. The two Lepiduses were cousins with the same name.
Claudius Goes Hawaiian, I, Claudius, Love Lucy (“N-n-n-n-n-no L-l-l-lucy! You c-c-c-c-an’t rule the known world with me! And Cæsar Romerus is c-c-c-oming to dinner tonight!”) and Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus and the Chamber of Pluto complete the series.
Incidentally Claudius the God is a much longer book than I, Claudius, but is condensed into the last 2 of the the 13 episodes of the miniseries. Needless to say, a LOT is cut (and to think that Laughton/Oberon were going to do I, CLAUDIUS as a 2 hour movie- that would have been an editing job to end all.)
PS- This family tree (not complete at all but moreso than most) can be extremely helpful in the book when you’re trying to remember “Okay… who was Postumus’s dad again? And is Tiberius any blood relation to Augustus?” type stuff. The first copy of I.C. that I read many years ago was from the 30s and had a fold-out family tree that contained all of the major characters and showed how Claudius and Messalina were related, the lineage of Livia and their fates, etc., but this was cut from the subsequent editions (even the hardbacks) though C.t.G. still contains the Herodian family tree (which is interesting but not really necessary for the book).
Speaking of the Herodian family tree, I did read King Jesus some years ago. Graves portrays Jesus Christ as the son of Mary by Herod the Great’s oldest son Antipater. It’s not one of his better works, and that has nothing to do with the blasphemous tone of it. (Frank Yerby’s Judas My Brother, written around the same time, was much better.)
I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the Julio-Claudian dynasty, and got to know that family tree rather well. And we make jokes about redneck families. Did you know that Tiberius was his own ex-stepfather-in-law?
You got that right. I plowed through one-and-a-half of her novels before giving up in disgust. They were extremely detailed lessons on Roman civics disguised as boring novels.
Imagine someone writing a history of the last couple of American presidents based on The Clinton Chronicles and Farenheit 9/11, and you’ll have the general idea.