Robert Graves was a poet and a writer. He also translated classic works and was a professor at the University of Oxford. His book “I, Claudius” was his most successful novel. It was written as it was Claudius himself writing it and it tells the story of the Roman Empire through his eyes, from his childhood to when he took office as Caesar. The events described were real, but the way they happened is fictional and myths and rumours were taken as real events. Assassinations, murders disguised as accidents, betrayals, conspiracies, and dubious and complicated family connections were hallmarks of the Roman Empire. You can find them all in this book, abundantly. When reading it, you feel like you are actually living in those times.

Claudius was a Roman Emperor, who was not supposed to have been one. He had a limp (thus the verb “claudicar” in some Latin languages) and a fragile health. He also stammered. Members of his own family, the Caesar family, despised him and kept him away from public gatherings. He watched 3 rulers come and go before he was called for duty when he was about 50 years old. The previous Emperor, Caligula, had murdered all male descendants of the first emperor, Augustus, but he spared Claudius for an unknown reason. Although there was not a written rule that a descendant would take the “throne” after the death of the Emperor, that was usually the case and, when Caligula was murdered, Claudius was the obvious choice.

The story begins with Augustus ruling. Born as Gaius Octavius, he was the successor of Julius Caesar and the first official Roman Emperor. He had a long reign, supported by his powerful wife Livia, who would literally do anything to keep her power. Claudius extensively talks about this couple because they kind of set the tone for subsequent rulers. In fact, all rulers up to Claudius, including him, were raised by them. As he tells his life story, how and why he became a historian and a writer, he also tells the story of Tiberius and Caligula, the two emperors before Claudius, from when they were kids to when they were murdered (and why and how they were murdered).

“Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina” is the second book of this short series and it tells the story of Claudius’ life as emperor.