Happy New Year!

As the world endured its usual eruptions of bubbly and gunfire, Kate and I spent yesterday evening enjoying one of my Christmas presents, a set of the BBC program I, Claudius on DVD.



This 13-part series, which appeared in 1976 (and yours truly first watched as an impressionable 7-year-old), traces the lives and dirty doings of the first four Emperors of Rome, as seen through the eyes of number four, the lame, stuttering Claudius. Claudius' gambit was to appear the fool--and in doing so, he survived when many others succumbed in the fight for the throne.



It's a fascinating show, the best recreation of Imperial Rome I know of (if a bit stagey at times). And the books, by Robert Graves, are even better. Definitely worth seeking out.



This morning, while hunting a Rickenbacker guitar on the 'net, I found an excellent site: students at Saint Anselm College have gone through both Graves' books and the TV series, showing what is supported by ancient historians and what is not. As one might expect, the students are sometimes a little too "it's-just-the-Net-so-who-cares" offhanded in their analysis--which makes them appear to sneer a bit--but that's a quibble. What's not a quibble is that the second half of the series seems to be given short shrift, compared to the exhaustive treatment of the first several. (I mean, it's only AFTER Caligula shows up that the whole 'what's true/what's not' issue gets interesting.) In any event, the I, Claudius project is an excellent resource, fascinating and much needed. Kudos to the students--check it out after you watch the series. Generally speaking, I think I, Claudius is a tremendously compelling vision of how power corrupts--20 centuries later, what is true and what is not is impossible to define, but it rings true.