![]() ![]() My history of Carthage is full of amusing anecdotes. He was a very sound historian, and the last of the Romans. Pollio used to get attentive audiences by giving expensive dinners. And good books too, thirty-five years' hard work in them. He fought in World War I and won international acclaim in 1929 with the publication of his memoir of the First World War, Good-bye to All That. ![]() I was thinking, 'So, I'm Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now. ROBERT GRAVES (1895-1985) was an English poet, translator, and novelist, one of the leading English men of letters in the twentieth century. Written in the form of an autobiography of the Roman Emperor Claudius. But I shall be frank and tell you what it was, though the confession is a shameful one. I, Claudius is a historical novel by English writer Robert Graves, published in 1934. His Claudius is a man that we can’t help but like, even if, at times. ![]() “And what thoughts or memories, would you guess, were passing through my mind on this extraordinary occasion? Was I thinking of the Sibyl's prophecy, of the omen of the wolf-cub, of Pollio's advice, or of Briseis's dream? Of my grandfather and liberty? Of my grandfather and liberty? Of my three Imperial predecessors, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, their lives and deaths? Of the great danger I was still in from the conspirators, and from the Senate, and from the Gaurds battalions at the Camp? Of Messalina and our unborn child? Of my grandmother Livia and my promise to deify her if I ever became Emperor? Of Postumus and Germanicus? Of Agrippina and Nero? Of Camilla? No, you would never guess what was passing through my mind. Graves clearly knew what it was that his readers wanted namely, melodrama and gossip and he delivered it in droves. ![]()
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