I, Claudius

Robert Graves's I, Claudius was published in 1934 and is written as the autobiography of the Roman emperor Claudius. It covers the history of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and the first decades of the Roman Empire, running from the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC to the assassination of Caligula in AD 41, and it is narrated by a man who is present for the murders, marriages and poisonings of the imperial household without ever being taken seriously by it.

Claudius, who lived from 10 BC to AD 54, was born with a stammer and a limp, and his own family treated him as a fool and a weakling. That reputation is what allows him to survive the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius and the increasingly erratic Caligula, until the Praetorian Guard makes him emperor in AD 41. Most of the events in the narrative are drawn from the accounts of the Roman historians Suetonius and Tacitus, arranged into a first-person story that fills the gaps between them.

Graves continued the account in a sequel, Claudius the God, published in 1935, which runs from Claudius's accession to his death in AD 54 and includes a section written as a biography of his contemporary Herod Agrippa.