Roman Revival

I, CLAUDIUS--R.obert Graves--Smith & Haas ($3).

"What sort of speech did Caesar make before the Battle of Pharsalia? Did he beg us to remember our wives and children and the sacred temples of Rome and the glories of our past campaigns? By God, he didn't!

He climbed up on the stump of a pine-tree with one of those monster-radishes in one hand and a lump of hard soldiers' bread in the other, and joked, between mouthfuls."

In such a contemporary, conversational tone Robert Graves writes his historical novel about the Emperor Claudius (B. C. 10-A. D. 54). Readers for whom the life of ancient Rome has been mummified by academic historians, museums and Latin grammar will give Author Graves a rising vote of thanks. He has done what few historians can do by making a complicated period of history as exciting, as plausible, as a well-told story.

Hero-narrator is Claudius himself, least considered member of that Imperial family whose fine flower was Augustus, first Emperor of Rome. Born prematurely, and afflicted all his life with a limp, a stammer and a sense of humor. Claudius lived to thank his stars that he was not a conspicuous member of his clan. His grandmother Livia, Augustus' wife, was a woman of decided and dangerous character and her schemes for ruling the Empire made frequent use of murder. Claudius was not even allowed to marry whom he liked. The pretty girl he wanted was murdered on their betrothal day; thereafter he was given in succession a sluggish giantess and a cold-blooded socialite. Eventually he managed to divorce them both and enjoy a quiet interlude with a sensible mistress. Since he was not judged fit for public office, he studied history and planned to write the true story of his family. His father Drusus. his brother Germanicus both came to suspiciously sudden ends. When the good Augustus died (by his wife's poison) and was succeeded by the vicious Tiberius, Claudius lived in observant retirement. Under the rule of the madman Caligula he found himself in the unenviable position of middle-aged court butt.

Thanks to his sagacity and his apparent incompetence, Claudius came unscathed through the ruthless realpolitik of Augustus' reign, the tyrannies of Tiberius', the craziness of Caligula's. A Roman of the old school, nostalgic for the Republic, he saw that Rome was headed in a showier direction. His stoicism kept him fairly equable through bankruptcy, an accusation of treason, a near-drowning, when he was thrown into the River Rhone by Caligula's orders. In the sabbatanic orgies at the palace Claudius played well his appointed role of buffoon, bided his time. But when a conspiracy finally rid Rome of Caligula, only a threat of death from the Palace Guard made Claudius choose the unwanted post of Emperor. He comforted himself by thinking that now he could give public readings from his history, and people would have to come and pay attention.

No light-fingered romancer, Author Graves has dug carefully into a mine of authorities (Suetonius, Tacitus, Dio Cassius, Josephus, scores of others) for the outline and main incidents of his story. His good and scholarly friend Aircraftman T. E. Shaw (T. E. Lawrence) scanned the narrative for anachronisms, found none. Though I, Claudius abounds in murderous incidents, scandalous anecdotes. Author Graves can in almost every case quote classical scripture as his authority. Says he: "There is no main incident in the book

which does not derive from some suggestion or hint in some classical authority, and some of the most surprising apparent inventions have historical foundation." Some of them: the haunting to death of Germanicus at Antioch; Caligula's bridging of the Bay of Baiae; Tiberius' ingenious cruelty to a fisherman he suspected of trying to poison him; the song Julius Caesar's veterans sang at his French triumph:

Home we bring the bald whoremonger,

Romans, lock your wives away.

I, Claudius covers 51 years of the Roman Empire. Though the story is laid in Rome, there are scenes in Germany, the Balkans, France, Africa, Antioch, Rhodes, Egypt. Claudius' story does not end on the 494th page. His 14 years as Emperor is the subject of Author Graves's forthcoming book, Claudius the God.

The Author, at a defenseless age, was patted in his pram by the late great Poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, but this laying-on of hands produced no precocious poetics. The eighth of a large family (ten) of mixed German, Irish and English blood, Robert von Ranke Graves was born in London (1895), educated at Charterhouse and in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. Like many of his English generation he was a battle-scarred veteran when he went up to Oxford (St. John's College) as an undergraduate. Already established as one of the outstanding poets of the War, he turned his pen to many a subject to keep the pot boiling, wrote on everything from the interpretation of dreams to the future of swearing. Other occupations included keeping a shop on Boar's Hill, outside Oxford, school-teaching in Egypt. His friend Shaw once helped him out of a financial slough by presenting him with one of the rare copies of his Seven Pillars of Wisdom, telling him to sell it when read. Five years ago Author Graves left England, now lives in Deya, Mallorca with Laura Riding. Tall, lean, black-a-vised, muscular, Robert Graves looks younger than his 38 years.

Other books: Goodbye to All That; Lawrence and the Arabs; The Real David Copperfield (TIME, March 26); Collected Poems; Poems 1933.

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