From Blown SPQR

[verlaine]

The other night Tessa and I finished the last episode of the 1976 BBC adaptation of I, Claudius, which we enjoyed immensely. It filled in some shameful gaps in my classics knowledge - I never took any of the ancient history options at Oxford, and wouldn't have been able to put the first five Emperors in order if my life depended on it

Comments

[verlaine]

Bitter about what? The fact that the Republic never returned and there were still Roman Emperors a good millennium later? Damn right I'm bitter.

[undyingking]

Graves's Claudius seems to have a rather idealized view of the Republic, the last century or so of which was a pretty good advertisement for just about any other form of government. It's almost as though his author hadn't read any further back than Suetonius.

[strange_complex]

while I was an undergraduate I was always plunging off into flights of speculative fancy

Obviously you've already realised that an academic approach to Classics doesn't leave much room for this. But would you enjoy writing historical fiction, perhaps with a more than usually fantastical bent?

[ravenblack]

It's Clavdivs, you philistine.

[verlaine]

You are venturing onto a slippery slope that will lead to me referring to you as "Rauen", and you won't like it...

[ravenblack]

I don't know what this new-fangled cvrly-bottomed character yov keep vsing is, bvt I don't like it.

[verlaine]

I just like making extra work for the chisels of the scribes, because I'm a bastard.

[mr_malk]

Don't say Christopher Biggins like that was a badthing! Casting Nero as the archetypal Pantomime Dame was a stroke of Genius I tell you! Or Genivs if you prefer.

In the mean time, apply a liberal smear of "there-there" to your rant glands, and get plenty of bed rest. You'll be feeling better in no time.

[alawston]

I went to Tiberius's Villa on Capri last October, there were a lot of lizards and we decided we'd have tried very hard not to be 'unsatisfactory lovers' as it was a long way down to the jagged rocks.