ABSOLUTE POWER

 

The idea that historical novels "contain allusions to the world in which and for which they were written" is easily applied to I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1934). Robert Graves wrote his Claudian books at a time of building political unrest, when the threat of national dictatorships was no longer theoretical.

World War One saw off a number of Europe's traditional autocrats ― Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm, Austro-Hungary's Emperor Franz-Joseph, Russia's Tsar Nicholas ― with their realms dismembered and rearranged as separate states by the Treaty of Versailles. This did not bring the expected peace and security. In the wake of bankrupt monarchies, elected governments struggled. New authoritarian leaders rose up to replace them ― Il Duce! Der Fuhrer! Comrade Party Secretary ― modern political tyrannies aiming to redraw post-war boundaries.

      "Like many other English intellectuals of this period, [author Robert Graves] was concerned by the worsening political situation; and the most general themes of [his] novels ― the paradoxes of power, the dangers of corruption and the perils of compromise, the position of the notionally absolute ruler ― are of great relevance to the decade of Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin ... Certainly the resonances of his work were not lost on Mussolini, who, intent on reviving the ideology of the Roman Empire [in Fascist Italy], had Graves' novels banned for their unfavourable representation of imperial Rome."

(Philip Burton, 1995, 'The values of classical education: Satirical elements in Robert Graves' Claudius novels', RES New Series, Vol XLVI, No 182, p 199)

Graves' fictions are therefore a direct response to serious problems emerging in Europe, but this does not mean they are dated or boring. From the start, readers are assured that I, Claudius is not intended to be dull: "The Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius, Born B.C. 10, Murdered and Deified A.D. 54", promises to be "a confidential history addressed to...an extremely remote posterity", and therefore "hiding nothing". Claudius rarely disappoints.

Rome under the Caesars is pretty much as predicted by the Sybil of Cumoe:

            Who groans beneath the Punic Curse

            And strangles in the strings of purse,

            Before she mends must sicken worse.

            Her living mouth shall breed blue flies,

            And maggots creep about her eyes.

            No man shall mark the day she dies.

I, Claudius is the story of a ruthless and scandalous elite, in the broad tradition of Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The Julian and Claudian families claw and scratch at one another in their ambition to gain "the golden predicament", the laurel leaves of absolute power.

Underneath all their plotting and poisoning there is an important sub-theme of political opposites. The great moral binary in the two books is,

Dominus et Deus

versus

res publica restituta

meaning Emperor ('Lord and God') or Senate ('restore the republic').

      "A persistent theme occurs throughout Graves' novels ... various members of the imperial family gravely explain that they would like to abolish the imperial monarchy and 'restore the republic' ... or various members of the family are murdered or placed under suspicion for their attempts or desires to restore ... the aristocratic, oligarchic form of government that the Romans style res publica."

(Paul Harvey, 1979, 'Tacitus' last work: Historiographic aspects of Robert Graves' I, Claudius', The Classical Outlook, vol 57, No 1)

This principle was probably empty rhetoric, which few believed but nevertheless exploited for political advantage. At the end of Claudius the God, Claudius tries to interest his son Britannicus in such a plan. The young man's response is suitably cynical. 

       "The Republic's dead, except for old-fashioned people like you and Sosibius. Give me proper tutors. My present ones are no use to me. I want to understand finance and legal procedure, I want to learn how to be an Emperor!"

The impatience of young Britannicus with his father echoes a contest familiar to Graves and his readers in the 1930s. Democracies appeared to be crumbling, unable to solve the immediate problems of economic depression and social unrest. The new dictatorships, on the other hand, seemed to provide the very qualities that elected governments lacked ― a strong sense of purpose, efficient administration, social order, and impressive economic growth. 

Totalitarian regimes were 'young', 'modern', 'popular', or so their propaganda machines informed the masses. Existing democracies were 'old', tired, tolerated, according to the newspapers. The forward-thrust of one-man-one-party states (energy, excitement) now seriously challenged the weariness of more-of-the-same politics.

In Britain, the failure of "parliamentary gradualism" (democratic socialism) to introduce meaningful social reform disillusioned many. Elections in 1931 removed Ramsay Macdonald's Labour Party government, it having proved powerless before cascading unemployment in coal, textiles, ship building and steel. By then, Sir Oswald Mosley had already left the Labour Party to form his New Party, which he renamed the British Union of Fascists in 1932. This was a warning that militaristic uniforms and inspirational oratory could mask the enormous human cost of tyranny, even in England.

The last one hundred pages of I, Claudius are tough going. This final section of the book describes the rule of an insane Caesar called Gaius, better known as Caligula. Within months of his becoming Emperor, Caligula is forced to withdraw to his bed to recover from "brain fever". On his reappearance in public he announces to "Uncle Claudius" that he has been "undergoing a metamorphosis", a transformation that he believes "is the most important religious event in history". Claudius takes the hint and falls flat on his face on the floor, from where he apologises for not having recognised Caligula's divinity earlier.

A tendency to laugh at Caligula's silliness soon becomes a fixed grin (rigor strictus) as the reader realises this is no joke. The emperor's capricious cruelty is met by abject grovelling from everyone else, Claudius included. The monster cannot be stopped. As Caesar he can do whatever he wants. These excesses are so obscenely off-centre, the dangers of Caesar as a god so perilous, that assassination starts looking like a rational solution.

Part of the problem is that the previous reigns of Augustus Caesar and Tiberius Caesar have conditioned Rome's leading citizens to servility. A system of "informers" being rewarded with substantial parts of the estates of those they inform against has reduced the Senators of Rome to automatic cowardice. None of them are prepared to risk their lives and declare Caligula 'unclothed'.

No person, or persons, are brave enough to halt manifest absurdities like a quarter of a million Roman soldiers gathering sea-shells on the Channel Coast (one helmet full each) to celebrate the mad emperor's conquest of Britain (a totally imaginary event). Ordinary citizens who booed his Green Team when it won every chariot race in the season of perpetual Games were dragged from the crowd and beheaded there and then by the Palace Guards. Generals, provincial governors, and senators alike, laughed and applauded Caligula's genius.

It takes too many years of 'misrule' and terror before the delusional emperor is dispatched by his own Guards. Claudius, as the last man standing, (well, hiding behind a curtain actually) is proclaimed the new Caesar by the same bloody hands that executed the old one.

By rights, this is where the Claudius novels should have stopped. Graves' point is made when absolute power corrupts absolutely. Adulation of the 'princip' reaches its moral conclusion in Caligula, and the megalomania of Hitler and Stalin is satisfactorily foretold.

However, the author has continued with the story of Claudius, as ruler. Perhaps it was out of a sense of historical completeness, or ongoing fascination with his field of research, but the result is unnecessarily repetitive. As the title of the second book suggests, Claudius the God was no more Republican than his predecessors. Competent and relatively efficient, but still a dictator, who ignored the Senate and approved the succession of his wife's son Nero.

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