Status Updates From I, Claudius (Claudius, #1)

“The generations somewhat overlapped in this way and the genealogical tree of the Imperial family became a rival in complexity to that of Olympus. This was not only because of the frequent adoptions and the marrying of members in closer degree of kinship than religious custom really permitted…but because as soon as a man died his widow was made to marry.”

“Julia’s nocturnal orgies in the Market Place and on the Oration Platform itself had become a matter of grave public scandal, yet it was four years before so much as a rumour reached Augustus. Then he heard the whole story from none other than her sons, Gaius and Lucius, who came together into his presence and angrily asked him how long was he going to permit himself and his grandchildren to be disgraced.”

“…she…complained to Augustus in far stronger terms than Tiberius (who was vain enough to believe that she still loved him in spite of everything) could have foreseen. Augustus had always had great difficulty in concealing his dislike for Tiberius as a son-in-law—which had of course encouraged the Gaius faction—and now went storming up and down his study calling Tiberius all the names that he could lay his tongue on.”

“ It was he who first inclined me to history. He had copies of the first twenty volumes of Livy’s history of Rome, which he gave me to read as an example of lucid and agreeable writing. Livy’s stories enchanted me and Athenodorus promised me that as soon as I had mastered my stammer I should meet Livy himself, who was a friend of his. He kept his word.”

“ In place of Cato I now had good old Athenodorus for my tutor. I learned more from him in six months than I had learned from Cato in six years. Athenodorus never beat me and used the greatest patience. He used to encourage me by saying that my lameness should be a spur to my intelligence. Vulcan, the God of all clever craftsmen, was lame too.”

“I have written about old Cato more than I intended, but it is to the point: he is bound up in my mind both with the ruin of Rome, for which he was just as responsible…and with the memory of my unhappy childhood under…his great-great-great-grandson. I am already an old man and my tutor has been dead these fifty years, yet my heart still swells with indignation and hatred when I think of him.”

“ My tutor I have already mentioned, Marcus Porcius Cato who was, in his own estimation at least, a living embodiment of that ancient Roman virtue which his ancestors had one after the other shown. He was always boasting of his ancestors, as stupid people do who are aware that they have done nothing themselves to boast about.”

“I was a very sickly child—“a very battleground of diseases”, the doctors said—and perhaps only lived because the diseases could not agree as to which should have the honour of carrying me off…I had malaria, and measles which left me slightly deaf in one ear, and erysipelas, and colitis, and finally infantile paralysis which shortened my left leg so that I was condemned to a permanent limp.”