James Baquet

    English writer Robert Graves (1895-1985) was known as both a poet and a classicist. Among his over 140 works is “The White Goddess,” an assemblage of articles on mythology that emphasizes the creativity inherent in myth making. The book is also deeply observant on the connections between mythology and poetic thinking.

    All of this contributes to the beauty of his 1934 historical novel “I, Claudius” and its sequel, “Claudius the God,” 1935. It is ostensibly an autobiography of the Roman emperor Claudius (10 B.C.- A.D. 54), uncle and successor to the crazed tyrant Caligula (great-great grandnephew of Julius Caesar), and a history of his time.

    In fact, young Claudius was deemed unfit by his family to reign as emperor. He stammered, walked with a limp, and seemed to be mentally deficient. While this excluded him from ruling, it also made his family take him for granted, not seeing him as a threat. As he grew out of many of these perceived deficiencies, however, he started to write histories, and did so with a frankness that made other members of his family uncomfortable. Again, they thought him unsuited to being emperor.

    Graves uses these historical elements to create a character who, while inwardly shrewd, is passed over and assumed to be a harmless fool. This was useful in a family that included Caligula just before him, and the equally ruthless Nero succeeding him.

    Thwarting the family’s wishes, however, was the sentiment of the public: The people loved Claudius. Perhaps that’s why Caligula appointed him to public office, though he tormented Claudius at every turn.

    And so it was that, when Caligula was assassinated, Claudius was made emperor, first by the jeering advocacy of the military, and then with the approval of the Senate.

    In naming it to their own “100 Best” list, Time magazine said of the novel’s style that Claudius was “an appalled observer of his treacherous times — in his voice you hear the worldliness of classical literature with none of its marble officialdom.”

    Vocabulary

    Which word above means:

    1. being a permanent, inseparable part of something

    2. dangerous

    3. shocked, horrified

    4. considered, thought

    5. one who studies the Greeks and Romans

    6. spoke haltingly, starting and stopping

    7. going against, opposing

    8. supposedly, apparently

    9. the accepted authorities

    10. putting together of something