Disfigured, awkward and clumsy, Claudius (10 BC – 54 AD / Reigned 41 – 54 AD) was the black sheep of his family and an unlikely emperor. Once in place, he was fairly successful, but his poor taste in ...

Earlier this month a rare almost 2000-year-old border stone from the reign of the Emperor Claudius was unearthed in the city of Rome. The stone, technically known as a pomerium cippus (boundary stone) ...

Why was the first century so turbulent? The first answer is simple: hereditary rule. For most of this period, emperors were not chosen on the basis of their ability or honesty, but simply because they ...

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 ...

In 1934, English poet and historian Robert Graves electrified the literary world with his novel I, Claudius, which along with its 1935 sequel Claudius The God told the story of nearly 100 years of the ...

A RICH FAMILY takes control of one of the world’s two superpowers and rules for generations with the aid of a compliant Senate. That is not the plot of a 21st-century political satire but of “I, ...