A Great Historical Novel

Claudius the God: And His Wife Messalina – Robert Graves

This is Volume II of Graves’ imagined autobiography by the Roman emperor Claudius (10 BC – 54 AD). In the preface, Graves answers critics who carped that he merely borrowed from Tacitus and Suetonius for Volume I, entitled I, Claudius (1934). Graves then reels off a list of ancient historians that he consulted so that he could question the conventional wisdom that Claudius was a lucky fool, glutton, crapshooter, and cringing social climber. By digging into his subject’s character and motivation, Graves shows that Claudius could not have been simply a lucky fool since he was cunning enough to successfully survive the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula and then maintain his own power for as long as 13 years.

Curiously, the first part of the book does not focus on Claudius’ first days in office. Instead, the beginning is a longish picaresque that tells the ups and downs of Herod Agrippa. In the early 30s, in Galilee and Antioch, Agrippa fell out of favor due to sad misunderstandings involving debts, misuses of public funds and rustling a horse. He then went to Alexandria, where he encountered troubles in the form of communal tension between the Greeks and Jewish people. Worried over debt and warrants and trials and prison time, he decided to return to Rome, where he turned to his friend Caligula, heir to the throne, to solve his financial problems. In the year 36 the ailing Emperor Tiberius, however, had him tossed in the clink for loose treasonous talk. Upon the death of Tiberius, pal Caligula sprung him from the joint. In a happy turn of fortune, Herod Agrippa then became King of Judaea, the first king since his grandfather (the Herod we remember due to his infamous mass slaying of the infants of Bethlehem). Strictly from the viewpoint that stories about scamps and rogues are an attraction, it’s enjoyable for readers who liked Jonathan Wild or Roderick Random or Barry Lyndon.

The book examines Claudius' marriage to teenaged Messalina. That somebody only sixteen-years-old could rise to heights of power in an empire seems to me a powerful argument against monarchy. But let’s give her lack of scruple the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the explanation is that her teenage brain was slow in developing the ability to predict consequences and make moral and ethical decisions that wouldn’t make an ordinarily decent person shudder. So she was always up to something, usually no good and to her own profit.

Though warned by Herod not to trust anybody, in his wily but love-blinded mind Claudius trusts Messalina only to suffer when she betrays him with politically expedient sexual affairs and administrative corruption in the form of bribery, extortion, influence-peddling, fraud, and embezzlement. For instance, Messalina encourages Claudius to exert centralized control of the grain supply of Rome through a system of state monopolies. Claudius is not convinced that’s a good idea, being a market-oriented guy. In the end, her sway over him is too strong for him to remain unpersuaded. Messalina, who has probably reincarnated as a high provincial official in Communist China, finds herself in the happy position to demand bribes in exchange for the right to manage the monopolies. Such stories make one grateful for the social and economic progress that has occurred in the last 2000 years despite the best efforts of thieves and conservatives.

Graves supposedly didn’t like his own fiction, claiming he wrote the novels for the money. However I think as a writer he dares greatly and succeeds in writing a first-person narrative of a Roman emperor and making the text credible and absorbing over the course of 400 pages. 

It’s easy to enter into the spirit of pretending this fiction is an autobiography that wittingly and unwittingly gives insight into the personality and motives of the subject and the gangland hoods that surround him. Though we are pretty sure we should have our bushwah detector set to “sensitive” when Claudius is justifying the invasion of Britain or vindicating why the Republic could not be restored, we readers are convinced by the historical accuracy. For example, we willingly believe it all when Graves/Claudius explains the origins of bull-fighting in Thessalian bull-leaping or the reasons why chariots in warfare gave way to cavalry and infantry. Graves the veteran of WWI is also convincing when it comes to military points like the key importance among officers and enlisted that they have confidence in their generals, that they feel their lives will not be squandered.

Finally, for the reader looking for instruction along with the quivers of literary pleasure, Graves, writing in the middle 1930s, a time when Europe was getting ready to explode, introduces ideas about the paradoxes of power for he who would be the strongman and his idiot devotees, the bad effect of corruption on the allocation of government resources, and the perils of compromise with bad-faith adversaries.

Glossary: Ever one for self-improvement, I present the list of words in this novel that I had to look up. I recommend the Cambridge Dictionary because it gives British and American pronunciations though it will shrug at you for theurgical and gloze over.

auspice - a prophetic sign, especially a favorable sign

corybantic (acting, dancing, music) – wild, frenzied

to stint (pleasures) – supply an ungenerous or inadequate amount of (something)

to gloze over (an awkward conversation) – to explain away; extenuate; gloss over

abstemious – moderate, temperate, self-denying especially when eating and drinking.

mole – a large solid structure on a shore serving as a pier, breakwater, or causeway.

to take one’s self in hand – hold oneself in check, to control one's feelings, not to get angry, to be reserved, to be self-contained

erysipelas – an acute, sometimes recurrent disease caused by a bacterial infection. It is characterized by large, raised red patches on the skin, especially that of the face and legs, with fever and sometimes severe general illness

theurgical – the operation or effect of a supernatural or divine agency in human affairs

recrudescence - the recurrence of an undesirable condition

buckler - a small round shield held by a handle or worn on the forearm.

to debouch - emerge from a narrow or confined space into a wide, open area.

coracle – in Wales & Ireland, a small round boat made of wickerwork covered with a watertight material, propelled with a paddle.

causeway - a raised road or track across low or wet ground.

to frap – (nautical) to bind tightly

sodality  - a confraternity or association

chaplet - a garland or wreath for a person's head.

roundel - a small disk, especially a decorative medallion.

guy-rope - a rope or line fixed to the ground to secure a tent or other structure.

thegn - aristocratic retainer of a king or senior nobleman in ancient Britain

whipstock – the handle of a whip

expiatory – making atonement; ~sacrifice, ~festival, ~rites,

emulous - seeking to imitate someone or something.