I, Claudius

Just finished "I, Claudius", by Robert Graves. Really enjoyed it. "I, Claudius" is the story of four Roman empires, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, and the narrator and teller of the story, Claudius. Claudius is born into the Roman empirical family as grandson of Augustus. He is born with a gimpy leg and a back problem, loses his hearing in one ear, and stammers uncontrollably during conversations. For these reasons no one pays him much mind as he watches the other members of the family turn on each other with false charges of treason and doses of poison all to align themselves with the best possible chance of having their pick as heir to the throne.

Augustus is a pretty decent ruler but is lead by his super conniving wife Livia, who has little moral character and mass murderer. Tiberius is worse than Augustus and is always worries about assassination attempts and what people will think about him when he dies.

The funniest emperor is Caligula (stop reading if you don't want to know what happens). One day, several years into his reign, Caligula calls Claudius to his room where he had been laid ill for about a month and tells him that he has now turned into a god and as a result is no longer a man, but in a man disguise. He then proceeds to go insane and bring Rome almost to its ruin. For example, there was a prophecy stating that he would never ride his horse across some large body of water (I forget which one) so he gathers all the boats in the entire region, like a thousand of them, and put them end to end out to an island so he could gallop straight across. He never ends up returning the boats so when a storm comes later on most of the boats sink. He blames Neptune, the god of the sea, and swears his revenge by marching his army to the shore and uses his sword to cut apart waves, then makes his shoulders all gather seashells. He blows through all the state saving on huge celebrations and temples to himself and eventually when he needs money robs all this friends and makes the senator's wives and daughters become prostitutes. It got so bad that he had sold all his slaves so there was no one to feed to the lions so he randomly would pick people out of the crowd, cut their tongues off so they couldn't cry for help, and send them out to the stadium so everyone could watch them get eaten.

Through all this madness, Claudius just keeps quiet and becomes a historian. No one pays him any thought because he is thought to be an idiot, but he is actually very bright. He knows his best bet for not getting murdered is to keep playing the part until eventually he becomes emperor. From what I have read about the book online, most of it is accurate and Robert Graves even says in the book as Claudius that a writer of history should be able to embelish a conversation or event to make the story more interesting.

The main point I took from this book is how good we now have it. People will continue to complain and revolt and push towards a better future for themselves and their progeny, but not too often these days will a person poison their own family just for social status. For example on how we are better off now; today if you don't pay your taxes you get fined and maybe thrown in prison. In Rome, they would take your children and sell them off as slaves. This one guy (of many)was found guilty of, I think it was treason, which he had nothing to do with so he was sentenced to die. The law of the time was that all his kids had also to be killed, so they killed his sons on the spot. The poor dude's daughter was only 14 and still a virgin so, by law, they couldn't kill her, but proceed to rape her before throwing her off a cliff. Brutal. These stories go on and on like this throughout the book while telling the political and social history of the Roman empire, which makes it a lot of fun and a definite worthwhile read.

Next...Darkness at Noon (which took forever to get here)

In the hole...Tropic of Cancer.