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Quote of the Day: I, Claudius
“I, Claudius” was a wonderful BBC series based on Robert Graves’s book series. In one scene, the Emperor Tiberius finds out the head of the Praetorian Guard Sejanus has been plotting against him. His dissolute successor Caligula, wonderfully played by John Hurt, has the best lines:
Published in GeneralTiberius: She poisoned him with the help of Sejanus. And now they plot to assassinate me.
Caligula: People really are despicable.
Tiberius: The point is, how to arrest him. He controls the Guard. Four thousand of them. All loyal to him … not to me. His loyal servants, not mine. Castor warned me. I wouldn’t listen to him.
Claudius: Well, is there n-n-no one among them you can trust? No m-man of integrity?
Tiberius: Not that I know of.
Caligula: Isn’t that a terrible comment on our times, Uncle? On the other hand, if you can’t find a man of integrity, I always say look for a man of ambition. Find a dog who’ll eat a dog.
That was a great show. Derek Jacoby, Brian Blessed, Siân Phillips, John Hurt, Patrick Stewart, and John Rhys-Davies as Macro, with that creepy smile as he summons Sejanus to his doom — excellent all around. I laughed when I heard Mike Duncan in his History of Rome podcast describe Robert Graves (the author of the book) as “a member of the ‘Livia killed everybody’ school of Roman history.”
“They say a snake bit our mother once… and died.”
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I loved that series and loved the books even more. Thanks for the reminder!
I like watching HBO’s ROME and I, Claudius back-to-back. I, Claudius starts almost immediately after ROME ends.
(Doing it this way also provides an alternative explanation for why Livia is so cranky.)
I loved that show, and back in the days before VCRs we declined social invitations to stay home and watch it.
Here’s the music of the intro. It lacks the slithering snake which was in at least some of the episodes.
My then-boyfriend always called it “I Clavdivs.”
The titles always reminded me of the tiled wall of a subway station: “First Avenue and Claudius Street”
There was a dancing girls scene with bare breasts. In 1977 or thereabouts, this brief sequence was the first topless one on American broadcast TV. They got away with it because it was PBS.
Gotta add that to my Netflix queue.
Ah yes, the episode where Gimli and the War Doctor conspire to kill Jean-Luc Picard.
I love how TV Tropes describes the historical accuracy of the books/show: “Most of what happens is recorded in ancient sources. This is not the same thing as saying it actually happened.”
If you liked that one, you’d love the scene from the movie “Judgement at Nuremberg “ where Captain Kirk swears in Dorothy from the “Wizard of Oz” to testify against Colonel Klink and Elmer Gantry. 🙂
And don’t forget that Claudius himself was also a Time Lord. He was the earlier incarnation of The Master, before he regenerated into John Simm.
I’ve had this running through my head all afternoon and into the evening….
When the series hit the states I was working down South as a seed salesman for Northrup King, and manipulated my routes so I could land in a city with public TV on the weekends, just to watch “I, Claudius.” My reward for a week on the road. I’ve probably watched it 3 or 4 times since, and it never disappoints. Fictional as it may have been, a lot of people had their opinions of the Emperors formed by the excellent cast – the avuncular Augustus, gloomy weird Tiberius, cacklingly mad Caligula, and the ineffably decent old learned Claudius. (Nero has a moment at the end as a fat giggling idiot.) Oh, and rakish charming Herod! Er – okay.
HBO’s Rome is astonishingly good, and makes you despair when you see other TV series try to do the whole “Rome” thing. Shallow, dumb tripe. SoI take solace in some novel series, two of which I can recommend – Steven Saylor’s “Sub Rosa” books, John Maddox Robert’s delightful SPQR series, and Robert Harris’ novels.
All are set in the same crucial era, before and after the fall of the Republic. Why? Because we see parallels? Yeah, sure, maybe, but mostly, I think, because they depict a civilization that’s old enough to have its founding stories lost in the mists o’ history, has a sophisticated political, artistic, religious, and legal culture, and has hundreds of years yet to go. Perhaps we don’t respond to the the cautionary tale, but the implication that it would take centuries to undo completely what they’d achieved.
Plus, we sorta lose the plot after Nero.
I keep a journal, and have since the mid-Seventies. It was pretty sketchy in those early days, but as I entered the years of parenthood, and times when my career was at its peak, it was a great story. As I entered my sixties, the Great Recession conquered all, and I wasn’t writing as much, but I devoted more time to sifting through the old journals for whatever was valuable.
Much of what I found worth keeping and remembering had to do with the Communist era and the incredibly active time when it ended. People who’ve lived in countries that through that, like @titustechera, have an important and lasting message for Europeans and Americans. History hasn’t ended. The endless story of mankind isn’t on pause.
Why’d I bring that up here? Because when I first saw this show, I was a skinny, ambitious 25 year old. When I saw it and thought it all over again, I was 65, with a lifetime of droll, pithy, cynical truths of my own. In a way I could just barely have imagined in 1977, I’ve become the old man in the dark, quiet hours of the show, writing and retelling the once bitter and joyous battles of the distant past, remembering it with vivid clarity; people who’ve vanished, chances that should have been seized, stories that you’ll tell, and fail to tell, your successors.
Here’s a scene where Caligula is both insane and menacing.
I second Saylor’s Sub Rosa books. I am a big fan of Gordianus the Finder. He’s my favorite toga-wearing private detective.
There couldn’t have been a better choice to play Caligula.
Ah, that’s why my parents wouldn’t let us watch it. I remember it being described as a dirty show back in the day.
I used to freak out my first wife just by humming that creepy theme and moving my hand like a snake… which is not why she divorced me (I think).
I remember Patrick Stewart as Sejanus.
Too bad we are not taught more about Marcus Aurelius, a truly noble and competent emperor – erudite, as well.
I would love to see the Steven Saylor Sub Rosa novels on film, a la HBO’s Rome.
And here I just finished reading Seutonius.
Though I am unsure why @misthiocracy thought he needed to put in a clip from the Kavanaugh hearings.
MA stuck the Empire with Commodus, though. Commodus was the reason that there were five good emperors instead of six.
James, if you haven’t read Coleen McCullough’s Master of Rome series (especially the first two books), run, don’t walk, to your nearest device and order them. Far better than Saylor’s work, although I like Harris’ Cicero books. I have some fears, though, that you didn’t mention them because you didn’t care for them, in which case….well, I like you anyway.
I have always loved that scene. The great John Hurt as Caligula, George Baker as Tiberius and of course Derek Jacobi as Claudius. Patrick Stewart was the villain Sejanus.
My only problem with I Claudius is the portrayal of Augustus Ceaser as this doddering grandfatherly type. Whether he was poisoned by Livia or not I doubt that he was ever a doddering fool. I acknowledge that the portrayal is plausible, if not probable.
I agree. I like Brian Blessed, and I saw him live performing in MacBeth in Canada once. But I always imagined Augustus in a different way.