Posts: 565
Threads: 88
Joined: Jan 2006
Reputation:
0
Does anybody know what RG´s main sourses where when he compiled the stuff to weave his saga of Claudius where?
Would be intersesting to know. I have just listen to the two books as books on tape while I have nurtured a training injury to my back witch has imobaliseds me for a few days. Though leaving me time to fiddle with my kit.
I suspect lot´s of comes from Ceasar biographies (?) of Setonius witch I read just a while ago. A lot is common to that, but othewise. What was RG´s reputation as a Roman historian or was he just only a Novellist?
M
Posts: 227
Threads: 30
Joined: Aug 2004
Reputation:
0
Probably Suetonius, and maybe Tacitus.
Posts: 326
Threads: 7
Joined: Apr 2005
Reputation:
0
Graves was a classicist who wrote a number of books, both fiction and non-fiction, related to the ancient world, including The Greek Myths which is an extensively researched telling of a huge range of Greek mythology, The White Goddess, a slightly odd 'grammar of poetic myth' which falls in the same genre as Frazer's Golden Bough, and the Penguin translation of Suetonius, marketed as The Twelve Caesars, though if you want the best translation go for the Oxford World Classics version - Graves' translation includes more 'interpretation' than the Oxford one. He was much more a poet and novelist than an academic, and his non-fiction works bridge the gap between his classical interests and his poetry.
I Claudius is based extensively on Suetonius - perhaps inevitably given the racy details Suetonius provides, ideal for an historical novel, which draws on all the extremes, scandal and downright lies associated with the Julio-Claudian dynasty, though of course as Fabiano says, Tacitus is useful there too! But Graves would have been very familiar with all the historical sources relevant to the period, including Velleius Paterculus, Cassius Dio, Seneca, Josephus (briefly)...
Posts: 1,779
Threads: 187
Joined: Jul 2003
Reputation:
0
Graves was one of the "war poets" who emerged from the trenches of the First World War and came to prominence in the years after the war.
In the intro to I Claudius he thanks Aircraftman TE Shaw for reading the manuscript and offering helpful suggestions. Is this TE Shaw in fact TE Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) or someone else?
Kate, perhaps you can shed some light on that...
Narukami
David Reinke
Burbank CA
