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Summary: Historical Fiction, with an Emphasis on Historical
Review: I was very excited to read "I, Claudius" because of the almost unanimous praise it has received by Amazon readers. I'm sorry to say that I was disappointed in it. It's by no means a bad book, but I found that Robert Graves' cold historical voice kept me at a distance emotionally from the story and characters. Graves relates the story in a "first this happened, then that happened" kind of way, which has the benefit of explaining the history surrounding Claudius's rise to Roman Emperor in a clear and non-convoluted way. However, Graves' approach to the story also succeeds in keeping the reader uninvolved in the proceedings, because characters never become alive, but instead remain as about as engaging as the people you read about in high school history books. In short, I would recommend this book if you're in the mood for a plot-driven novel---and believe me, there's plenty of plot to sink your teeth into. But if you're in the mood to wrap your mind around fully developed characters and psychological complexity, I would read something besides this.
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Summary: The finest historical novel ever written
Review: I have read both I CLAUDIUS and CLAUDIUS THE GOD three times. Once as a teen, in my early 30s and again just recently. These books tell an incredible tale of Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus (Claudius) who through both his phyical shortcomings was able to be spared the insatiable appetite for power between members of his family in Rome in the the first century A.D. However, his physical deficiencies by no means affected his intelligence and he was able to overcome these obstacles to become emperor of the greatest empire in history: Rome. A true classic tale that was also well adapted in a BBC mini-series in the 1970s.
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Summary: Simply The Best
Review: This is my favorite novel of all times. A masterpiece. Robert Graves is a literary genius and a true scholar. An absolutely enthralling, multi-generational tale of the excess and scandal of ancient Rome. You will not only be blown away by the amazing, vivid prose, plot twists, and stellar characters, but you will become a "cocktail party" scholar of ancient Roman history!! No modern high-supsense espionage novel can come close to this crowning work of literature. Thank god the Modern Library recognized the genius of this stunning book by naming it the 15th greatest novel of the 20th Century. In my book, it's # 1, and I've read a lot of the Modern Library list. When you are done reading this, buy the Masterpiece Theater mini-series on DVD, which is quite simply the best thing ever put on tape in the history of television. I cannot say enough -- just read it, and your life will be enriched!!
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Summary: A Brilliant Literary Masterpiece
Review: This by far the best of Robert Grave's fictional works. A convincing portrayal of what life was like at the core of the early Roman empire. Graves masterfully develops the character of Claudius as he ponders his life and impresses his thoughts on to his "autobiography." The reader is then taken through the ambitions and intrigues of the Julio-Claudian dynasty from the reign of Augustus to Nero's. Through the eyes of Claudius, the reader is given a bird's eye view into the dynastic contests with wit and humor as well as the evolution of the empire from the remnants of a crumbled republic. With this insight, Claudius is soon appreciated by the reader as having a keen intellect as opposed to being dull and slow of wit. His desire for truth and his loathing of the imperial struggle gives his story clarity and impartiality. All of the characters are well developed; their actions and motivations all come to light in the course of the story. Along with Gore Vidal's "Julian" this is one of the greatest works in historical fiction in this genre or any genre. A must read for anyone who enjoys history or just a good story full of intrigue and suspense.
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Summary: The Claudius Saga
Review: Robert Graves, next to Joseph Campbell, is certainly one of the great mythographers of the twentieth century. I,Claudius, and the sequel Claudius, the God, offers a kind of parabolic historical romance. I was drawn to read these literary masterpieces because of my fascination with myth and history. There's an undeniable psychological component to myth and history, as Freud and Jung have shown; and moreover, as Graves and Campbell subsequently conveyed as such individually. Roman perfidy towards an oath of "friendship and protection" to the Phoenicians apparently set the so-called "Punic Curse" in motion, with a "money-madness that has choked Rome ever since," as Claudius, our narrator of the books stated. The disgusting excesses of a Roman Empire, as opposed to its halcyon period of the Roman Republic, soon follow. The "curse" is, apparently, a pervasive though invisible cause, attacking both hereditary and environmental factors. Born into nobility, yet sickly and lame, Claudius is shunned as an Idiot and a Stammer. His character wins our sympathy, nevertheless, because of his sincerity, wit and intelligence. Claudius plays the underdog in a fragmenting political world replete with perversion, duplicity, assassination, murder, sadism, and clinical insanity. Reminiscent of Dante's "Divine Comedy," Claudius take us on a grand tour of the Roman Empire circa the first millennium. As we climb to the zenith of political power with our heroic participant, observer, you could recall that, in and about the same space of time, the Devil is tempting Jesus with "all the kingdoms of the world." The lives of Herod, Jesus, and the prophecy of the Messiah are dutifully reported by our narrative "tour guide," Claudius, evoking an associative parable within parable. "For what good is it for a man to gain the whole world at the price of his own soul?" is the moral question one could rhetorically harmonize in tune with the synchronous events of the tale and era. The "Punic Curse," like "Original Sin" tries to address the religious causation behind the "disintegration of civilization" (Toynbee). It's a terrifying notion, I think, to play around with, suggesting a chronic form of evil karma, the root cause behind the "schism of the soul" (Toynbee) within the collective unconscious (Jung). "One of the cruelest aspects of the White Goddess," Graves stated elsewhere, is the "Night Mare." The Hellenic world of Claudius seemed to choke on its own cursed actions within a living nightmare. The cursed and dreaded nightmare plaguing our dreams and waking reality, reminds me of the famous passage from James Joyce's Ulysses, "History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."
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Summary: a great intro to the roman empire
Review: A wonderful book. _I, Claudius_ chronicles the reign of the Caesars in Rome from the perspective of the 4th Caesar. Julius is dead by the time Claudius is born, but our hero is intimately acquainted with Augustus and his wife Livia, Tiberius, and finally Caligula. Claudius plays the fool and manages to survive these turbulent years of Rome's history, filled with poisonings, treachery, and the deaths of many honest men and women. Especially during Caligula's reign, Claudius lives on a knife's edge, fearful everyday for his life, playing along with the mad emperor and trying to prevent him from doing Rome irreversible damage. Stunted from birth, Claudius is a sickly, stuttering child and young man. Ironically, this is the only thing that saves him. Most of his family believes he is an imbecile too unimportant to kill. Ignored by Augustus and Tiberius, tormented by his mother and by Livia, Claudius managed his last hurdle by entertaining Caligula with pert quotes from Homer and flattery. Claudius is a scholar-the only pastime he can manage in his crippled body. His knowledge of history serves him well during this period, providing him with examples from the past to guide his actions during a frightening childhood and youth. The book follows him up to the point of Caligula's death when Claudius finds himself suddenly the only surviving Caesar, hurled into the office by a dangerous mob of soldiers. He makes his peace with the senate and begins his long reign. Robert Graves tells the story in first person and provides the necessary guesswork details of Claudius's thoughts and feelings. However, the story is historical in its facts and details. This is a wonderful interdiction to the early history of the Roman empire.
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Summary: Et tu, Claudius
Review: 'I, Claudius' is actually part one of a two-part set, the second volume of which is 'Claudius the God'. The story is set in Rome at the time of the institution of Augustus, the first emperor, up to the accession of Nero, the last of the Julio-Claudian line of emperors (after this time, the imperial seat was more of a political prize to be fought for than a family bequest). Robert Graves intriguing use of the vernacular language and the extensive research, following largely the histories of Suetonius (a gossipy historian) rather than Tacitus (the formal, more official historian), gives a rather racy and juicy insight into the flamboyant lifestyle of the early imperial family, as seen through the eyes primarily of its most unlikely heir, Claudius the stammerer. Claudius escaped much of the political intrigue and was seen as a harmless outsider due to his physical impediments, which helped mask his intellectual capabilities and cunning insight into the actions of others. Grave's recreation is well-done, but a bit too sympathetic to his hero Claudius. Claudius was not the intellectual saintly character protrayed in theses novels--true, he wasn't nearly as bad as his predecessor Caligula or his successor Nero, but he had shortcomings that are often ignored for lacking the glamour of the evils of the two emperors who bookend his reign. Graves' use of language is interesting to note. Instead of translating historical scenes into formal, high-academic English (as a classically-trained Oxbridge scholar might be inclined to do), he put things into what Alistair Cook called the everyday language of the English aristocracy, a social class accustomed to the easy exercise of world-domination power, politically and socially. This makes it an engaging work that avoids the pitfalls of academic histories. Derek Jacobi's performance in the BBC production is stunning; what the novel leaves out in way of historical accuracy to detail (Claudius was married more times than would Graves' books attest, for instance) it more than makes up for by way of being an entertaining introduction to imperial Rome. Make sure to get both volumes!
Rating: 
Summary: Not a fan of Historical Fiction, but enjoyed it
Review: For someone uninterested in Roman politics and history, "I, Claudius" took some time to dig into. After I got a feel for the style however, I became engrossed in the survival of Claudius. The corruption of Livia and the injustice that was founded upon by it is a concept that the reader with love to hate. Historical fiction lovers might give this a 5, but as a fiction lover, I found Claudius by far the spotlight of the book, and wished that he was focused upon more.
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Summary: Roman Decadence & Literary Genius
Review: This is a great book, funny, horrifying and gripping. You must read "Claudius The God" afterward as they're really just one big novel in two volumes. A masterpiece you'll read again and again. This was my third copy.
Rating:
Summary: Unexpectedly Excellent
Review: Having picked this book almost-randomly from a list for my English class, I was certain that it would be a dry, however informative, read. I am very pleased to say that I was dead wrong. I read this entire book in one night--I could not put it down. Besides being an excellent tool with which to inform the common layman (such as myself) of the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula, it is an intriguing novel as well. Claudius is much more interesting here than in any textbook where I saw him before. (He is presented in most modern history texts as an almost-nobody, overshadowed by his insane predecessor and his mind-rotten successor.) I'd recommed this to anybody with an interest in history who does not like the dry read of a textbook.
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