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 palatial intrigues of his reign. Claudius reflects on the persons and events under his rule. He finds himself with a dwindling circle of friends and in the company of a devious young wife, Messalina. Claudius ponders his life with wit and humor. 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.

The book points out the many pitfalls of ruling a state; Claudius, sadly, is as much at the mercy of his wife as the Emperor Augustus was his -- a blind spot that nearly costs Claudius his throne. The advice Claudius receives from his friend Herod Agrippa in the beginning of the book -- to "trust no one", is indeed good advice.

As a character, Herod Agrippa steals the book -- the book's first seventy or so pages deal with his story, which form a very amusing and interesting digression -- and shows how Herod Agrippa's influence in Rome is instrumental in bringing the Senate around to recognizing Claudius.

Claudius introduces legal reforms; converts the harbor at Ostia into an all-season port to help secure Rome's food supply, conquers Britain, and revives the Roman religion. The book is a wealth of historical detail and interesting anecdotes.

The book is also engaging and entertaining; although one soon sees that the job of Emperor is no fun indeed -- Claudius has as much cause for paranoia as any of his predecessors.

The book is a must read for anyone who reads "I, Claudius", and is a very good work of literature that brings the Roman age to life.

Seneca was a relative of Claudius, and had many personal conflicts with the emperor. Additionally, he was the one responsible for the education of cruel Nero, who would become emperor after Claudius. So I don't think you could trust Seneca. The other two authors, Suetonius and Tacitus, were both senators. They were men of the highest rank, and these people had the tradition to look down at emperors who listened more to their freedmen than to the Senate. Claudius was such an emperor: he gave many important bureaucratic jobs to his freedmen, because he could trust them better than those wolves from the Senate. Not a very bad idea, is it? But being senators themselves, Suetonius and Tacitus didn't like this attitude and so they disliked Claudius as well. What I mean to say with this is that the image we get of Claudius in this book is not less important than the one we see in the old sources: if Suetonius is called 'objective', so should Graves be.

It's also quite interesting to compare the Roman writers with Graves. During the last months, I've read some texts by Suetonius in college, and it's striking to see how much of Suetonius' information is used by Graves as well. But while the Roman writer bluntly criticizes Claudius for everything he does wrong, Graves tries to explain the same cases in favour of Claudius. Whether Graves tells the truth or not, it is interesting to see how one tries to explain things. A good example is Claudius' order to execute Appius Silanus. Suetonius just tells that Claudius was faked by his wife, who wanted Silanus to be killed. Graves tells the same, but he adds to it that Silanus had refused to tell the truth (which was, that he was innocent) when he stood in front of Claudius. So he simply had to execute him. Another example: Suetonius tells about Claudius' habitude to allow farting and burping to his table-guests, because he once had a man at his table who nearly killed himself by holding up his farts. Of course, for ancient Romans like Suetonius, this was not done, but as a 20th-century writer Graves regards this deed as an act of mere humanity. And who wouldn't, after all?

Claudius' very human attitude is the red line of Graves' entire story: it's about a quite unconventional emperor, who is in conflict with old Roman values, presented by the Senate. According to Graves, Claudius may have been too benevolent for his job, a bit naive: he often got strangled in the large web of his relatives, particularly his wives Messalina and Agrippina (Nero's mother). Nevertheless: in Graves' story, Claudius is a good man, with whom the reader gets a lot of sympathy. He was just not entirely able to deal with the snakes that crawled around him. And look at the historical facts: there is proof that the Roman Empire was governed very well under Claudius' hands. The criticism from Roman authors is more about his personal attitude than about his regime itself. So this book, after all, is a fine example of 'explaining history'. Additionally, it's a joy to read.

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.

This particular volume looks at the later part of Claudius' life, concluding with the time when he was emperor. The intrigues that had carried on in the royal family continued unabated around him as emperor, except that the wise and almost omniscient Claudius of old seemed to develop blind spots once in the imperial seat, largely due to love. When his wife Messalina finally plots his overthrow with a divorce, he acts, and his life is rather sorrowful ever after.

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!